Microsoftskish, Joe Lurie is correct that Microsoft did put the HEVC video extension in the VLSC for download as an MSI installer. BUT, you must understand that it is still NOT free and you can NOT just install it wherever you want. You MUST still purchase licenses for this through your software reseller, such as SHI. (We know, because we had to go round and round with our Microsoft reps on this.) We originally contacted SHI and they were clueless about this and this wasn't even in their system to sell us. After we had Microsoft pass on the product information to SHI, we were able to purchase it from them. With us being a State government, we also cannot just write an invoice to purchase a single ($0.62 item in our case) license for something that costs so little. Generating the PO costs us more than the item. So we had to purchase multiple copies and then it is up to us to manually track which computers those get installed on. (It was infinitely easier to have the ability to purchase this via the Business Store and manage the users it was assigned to via the Business Store, but I digress. Microsoft took that ability away and will be killing off the Business Store, so our approach will most likely be to just block the public Store and pretend that Store apps don't exist. In fact, the apps we have assigned to users in the Store now, regularly fail to install and none of the techniques to 'fix' this ever work, so the Business Store is pretty much dead to us now.)
I personally feel they could just include this HEVC ability into Windows and charge us an extra $1 to buy a copy of Windows to cover what ever licensing they complain about as to why they can't include it. (Apple doesn't have a problem including it.) Windows 10/11 not having the native ability to deal with HEIC photos or HEVC (H.265) videos is just a hassle to deal with.
