Just received the Mi Box S, was impressed so far as to how much better it was than our "Android-based" tv box, but it couldn't play a majority of my media library, mostly H264 High-10 content. Both VLC and MX Player couldn't play that without stuttering. On MX Player, only SW decoder was supported, and checking the decoder settings, it says that hardware decoding is not available for 10bit H264.
Does that mean I'm out of luck?
Same problem. I also bought Mi TV Box S not too long ago. Everything works fine expect for that 10 bit x264 1080p videos. I guess I have to change those [pseudo] HEVC release to another encoding groups 😅 . Demn , can't watch my fav Anime movies
A point of contention here; Hi10p was derived neither for scene nor anime releases. It was an extension for 8 bit h264 to alleviate banding, and on that I agree. For the history of it, if you're so inclined, check the forums at doom9.org; that's where the x264 devs hung out.
It is non-standard in that almost no hardware support was offered. The Nvidia Shield, via Kodi, will play Hi10p files. Anything else, no idea.
Update: I found a player that's kinda a band-aid solution, which is called FTMC. So here's how it worked on my current devices.
I learned that my previous cheap shitbox has a Rockchip CPU that can actually play 10-bit H264 content, but it is limited to a certain number of reference frames (L5 or L5.1@ 10 ref frames up, no video is playing). No idea if it's just the player though. So I get to keep using it for mostly that purpose alone, because outside of that, it's really slow.
The Mi Box still can't decode them properly, but it's no longer a stutterfest. It actually plays kinda smooth, but there are artifacts so still not that great. On top of that all the files actually play, no black screen (unless it's Hi444p, which both can't play).
Yes you are out of luck.
10bit h264 aka Hi10P Anime is a "scene" legacy codec all dreamed up to prevent color banding in the early days of Anime releases. It is non standard.
And it really is redundant in a 10bit HEVC encoding era.
Only device that I know of that natively hardware decodes 10bit H264 are the recent Rockchip RK3328 and RK3399 devices with certain OS releases.