WebCamDevice.name is empty

(Cross-posted from forums: https://forum.unity.com/threads/webcamtexture-webcamdevice-name-is-empty.1155482/)

I basically have the same problem as this unresolved thread: https://forum.unity.com/threads/webcamtexture-and-device-without-name.532439/

I only have one webcam: the built-in laptop camera. The name is empty: and then creating the WebCamTexture fails: ERROR - Could not find specified video device

Using the default constructor (new WebCamTexture()) yields the same result.

Note that the simple VideoCapture api can record a video to a file just fine, but for my purposes, I need the frame-by-frame capabilities of WebCamTexture.

Sample code:

 public class StreamingVideoCapture : MonoBehaviour
     {
         private WebCamTexture m_webCamTexture;
 
 
         public void Start()
         {
             WebCamDevice[] devices = WebCamTexture.devices;
             if (devices == null || devices.Length == 0)
             {
                 return;
             }
 
 
             WebCamDevice device = devices[0];
             m_webCamTexture = new WebCamTexture(device.name);
             m_webCamTexture.Play();
         }
 }

If I use an external USB camera, it works fine, so it seems to be specific to my laptop camera. I came across this old bug regarding the camera name: https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/webcamtexture-dot-devices-returns-empty-name-string-when-webcam-name-contains-special-characters, so I tried editing the camera name in the registry to remove any special characters (It's just "HP HD Camera"), but got the same result.

Any solutions here would be greatly appreciated.