[dividuum]

That’s incorrect: Both have hardware support for decoding H265 up to 4K. The difference is H264: the Pi4 still has a hardware decoder (up to FullHD) while the Pi5 doesn’t and will use software decoding as it’s more than fast enough. As it is software, there’s no resolution limit.

[extraduder_ire]

Does this custom lineageOS build (or android in general) use the hardware decoding features? I wouldn't be too surprised either way.

[schappim]

You’re correct; I was thinking of H.264. The Pi 5 still has a 4Kp60 HEVC decoder.

[shrx]

Do you have any info on why they dropped support for H264 hardware decoding?

[dividuum]

The software decoder is fast enough: See https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?p=2145762#p2145...

[palata]

Or they did not want to pay for the license, or for the component.

The software decoder is not fast enough if you need to use the CPUs in parallel. So removing the hardware acceleration is a net loss of compute power.

[Narishma]

So they don't have to pay the license.