[emk2203]

H264 Hi10 4:2:0 is a dead-end codec. It's never got hardware acceleration support (a Rockchip SoC was rumoured to have hardware support - but Rockchip Linux support is lousy), and so the only real solution is CPU decode - which really means a decent x86 platform at the moment.

Hopefully the perceived benefit of H264 Hi10 (reducing banding on Anime re-encodes AIUI?) will transfer to H265 10 bit so that is used instead - which DOES have hardware SoC support (AML S905 does it for instance) in the future. We could then finally stop having to answer the same questions. Again. And Again. And Again.

Where I'm at a loss is as to how this hasn't happened yet. Some in the anime scene want the leanest and meanest compression, which is why it's really the only scene you see Hi10 in use. With HEVC/x265 available readily, why have a good number no jumped to that ship already?

If you follow the doom9 discussions about x265, it's clear that the codec is simply still not on par with H264 encodes. Where H264 and older get blocky, H265 gets fuzzy with low bitrates. This is the worst case for anime encoding because you see it more prominent there. If you have high enough bitrates, the file sizes are only slightly smaller than H264, at the price of 5x - 10x slower encode.

So why should anyone switch at the moment? I say Hi10p will stay for quite a while longer.