The other day I had to play a 4k video on a factory-reset Windows10 laptop, and upon loading the video with the default Windows Media Player, I got shown a missing codec popup, which led to a PAID codec download page of Microsoft Store for HEVC/H.265 (which cost about €1, dunno if price changes by region).

It was bewildering. Of course I downloaded VLC immediately and everything was great there, but the whole store just feels like a scam to me.
I tried to gather more information on this and even more bewilderingly, I came across this subreddit and this post…
www.reddit.com/r/linuxsucks101/

reddit.com/…/windows_users_can_still_get_or_use_h…

it’s quite a read if anyone’s interested.