No, the multiple patent pools covering HEVC want you to pay royalties for it. HEVC licencing is a mess:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#Patent_license_terms" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#P...</a><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:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1</a><p><a href="https://aomedia.org/" rel="nofollow">https://aomedia.org/</a>
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.<p>From about 2008 the advice became "VLC player can play nearly anything, just use that".