The VideoLAN Forums

I have VLC 2.2.6 on my 9 year old laptop, running Win 10 with no problems. Playing a video 1080p.HEVC.x265.mkv file shows rubbish, as many posts report. Is VLC unable to play this video? Or is my laptop too old and too slow?
Thank you.

VLC is not too slow, but your computer probably is. x265 is recent. A 9 year old graphics card is not. x265 files play perfectly on my computer, but if I try to fast forward (seek) the screen is a jumbled mess. This doesn't happen on x264 files. I assume my 6 year old desktop is too slow to do that properly. There is a lot more going on inside a x265 file, in both coding and decoding. We love the 40% reduction in file size, but we need a decent computer to play it.

I can confirm. Playing x265 needs a good CPU+GPU. On an old (2013) AMD A4-3300 with embedded GPU, inside W10-64/4Gb, playing an x265 is not smooth, i need to convert them to x264 to play fine. While playing "old" x264 is always perfect, also in full-hd 1920x1080p.

well playing hevc files on my laptop ( core i3-4005u with intel 4400 hd ) on Windows media player (lav codecs / Intel Quick Sync ) doesnt lag at all BUT the quality is rubbish
also using vlc is very smooth BUT the quality is rubbish
regarding THAT playing it on snapdragon 801 with 2.5 quad core cpu and adreno 330 gpu on 1080p display is very smoooth and the quality is the best

Thanks for your replies folks. Looks like I need to save my pennies and buy a faster machine

Buy a better graphics card, a one which can handle hardware acceleration for H.265/HEVC