[Ned Scott]

Thanks for your input!
Do you think hardware acceleration support for hi10p/1080p will be possible in future releases or do you think we will always be stuck to software decoding the stuff?

We're going to be stuck on software decode at least until the next big shift, which will likely be for h.265/HEVC, which will beat the pants off of High Profile and Hi10P. Really awesome stuff, but HEVC only just started their first draft standard and is planned for a final draft next year. Even then it will take the market a while for those hardware decoders to be wide spread, and there's no guarantee that Hi10P will also be added.

You have to remember that Hi10P isn't a new codec/profile, it's actually 8 years old. It just wasn't meant to be used in the consumer space, so no one bothered to support it in any consumer hardware. The only people using Hi10P in mass are anime fans in the last year or so, and in the big picture they make up a very small fraction of the hardware decoding market. There's no reason for companies to pump out new hardware decoding chips for Hi10P, especially with h.265/HEVC so close.

In other words, we're going to have maybe another year of this Hi10P stuff, then everyone is going to jump ship to h.265/HEVC.