>High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). You would think a codec first published 10 years ago is included in a modern operating system...
That's the problem. It's going to be another decade before a patent that age will expire.
To avoid this kind of thing, at any point in time people need to concentrate on using either codecs of the past which are no longer encumbered, or codecs for the future intended to never be encumbered.
Ugh, this reminds me of the years 2002 to 2008 when some people would install codec packs downloaded from dubious websites on their windows machines. I'm sure there was lots of malware.
From about 2008 the advice became "VLC player can play nearly anything, just use that".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#P...
If you don't want to pay royalties for the use of a video format then use a format which is licenced on royalty-free terms like AV1:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1
https://aomedia.org/