[Ned Scott]

I certainly agree in general, but on the other hand, if content providers use it (even if it's just a metric ton of fansub groups), it is supported and becomes a de facto standard. I would generally argue that anyone on the playback side of things has to follow the content, not the other way around. It's not really your problem if hardware decoders don't support the format. If end customers don't like it, they need to take their issues to the content providers or the hardware manufacturers.

The "metric ton" is actually the minority. The vast majority of consumers for video products/services through a computer are not even downloading content from torrents/IRC/whatever, but actually using paid services. The fact that Netflix is the single largest consumer of internet bandwidth says that, let alone all the other legit video services out there.

Then let's look at general TV/movie downloads (illegal/gray area/pirating/fair use/whatever you want to call it). Anime itself is a minority of these downloads, and live action video rip groups are not jumping on the Hi10 bandwagon like some anime groups are. (which is not to say that you won't find them, but then again you'd be surprised at how long Hi10 rips have been around in some form).

Then even within the anime scene this is still the minority. It took a while for there to be more downloaders of h.264 over divx, and there's still groups that offer divx. It's also a minority of subbers that are putting out Hi10 encodes (remember, Coal Girls, Commie, and a bunch of others are not subbers. They just repackage other people's subs with other video sources).

There are zero actual content providers serving up 10bit color depth content to consumers. All blurays and HD broadcasts are no greater than 8bit, so don't believe this hogwash about Hi10 being a higher quality (it can, however, retain a higher quality per megabyte since 10bit is a more advanced profile).

With all that in mind, I really don't think hardware venders are going to jump up and replace their hardware codec support, which has been stable for years. Now those venders are far more focused on other aspects of those hardware products, like energy usage.