[bscphil]

> h265 (HEVC) was all but DoA until years after it's introduction Apple finally decided to embrace it

No? You're talking in terms of PC / phone hardware support only. HEVC was first released June 7, 2013. The UHD Blu-ray standard was released less than 3 years later on February 14, 2016 - and it was obvious to everyone in the intervening years that UHD Blu-ray would use HEVC because it needed support for 4k and HDR, both of which HEVC was specifically designed to be compatible with. (Wikipedia says licensing for UHD Blu-ray on the basis of a released spec began in mid 2015.)