[noggin]

Regarding HDCP 2.2 or 10-bit HEVC, do you know what 10-bit picture quality improvements (visually) an end user would actually see say when sitting on a couch ?

10 bit video properly handled will significantly reduce quantisation artefacts, meaning graduated content should have far less visible banding (as there are 4 times as many greyscale levels in 10 bit as 8 bit) 10 bit video has been used in production - or has been an option - since SD digital video became common in studios and OB trucks in the 90s. (Both SD D5 uncompressed and DigiBeta 2:1 compressed were 10 bit on-tape formats) SDI is a 10 bit-friendly interconnect standard.

Similarly HD Cam SR (the standard HD tape format for mastering) and AVC Intra 100Mbs (the format that is replacing HD Cam SR for file-based master delivery in many regions) are both based on 10 bit codecs.

These days the 8-bit standard is often only imposed on transmission encoding, or Blu-ray/DVD mastering, with 10 bit content surviving all the way from acquisition to transmission (though in some cases 8 bit codecs are still used so 10 bit is not universal)

10 bit may also improve picture detail in very saturated content - particularly blues and reds, where most of the information is carried in the half-bandwidth Cr and Cb channels due to the very low contribution to the full-bandwidth Y channel.