The answer is no, the Skylake only has 8bit support and you are absolutely right, encoders are using it to encode even 720p 5.1 video in 10bit HEVC to get those file sizes down. I am mildly livid over Apple's decision to first, have H265 hardware decoding blocks in A8 and above, but refuse to pay the royalties for the patent, which would have retroactively made them pay a near $1 per EVERY iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, 6s/6s Plus (even iPhone 7/7 plus.
It even keeps access to it from any third party apps WILLING to incorporate the cost unlike how Dolby's assertion of their DTS and AC3 was handled which allowed player apps like Infuse 4 Pro to charge a fee to play those audio codecs. VLC interestingly enough being open source freeware had a big problem to overcome, having to PULL that audio support until it was able to (I imagine) leverage APPLE's payment to the Dolby creators to get functionality back on VLC on iOS 9.3.3. Unfortunately it seems the same can't be done on player by player app basis when dealing with H265 be it 8bit or 10Bit. I still can NOT believe they'd release their new MacBook Pro lineup without Kaby Lake 10Bit support. The ONLY new MacBook Pro that has hardware acceleration for 10Bit (Main10) is the new 15" Retina MBP and that is only b/c of its AMD Polaris graphics that supports it.
Don't be fooled by PS4 Pro describing their graphics as using Polaris Architecture, it is NOT Polaris Graphics, barely a GTX 470 and does NOT support hardware H265 and is all being done by the AMD Jaguar CPU which seems to manage a software decode and smooth (enough) playback or 1080p 10Bit HEVC anyway... Basically only the Roku 4 Ultra & Roku Premiere+, Amazon Fire TV 2nd Gen (big fat "no" on Apple TV 4) support Main 10, 10Bit H265 HEVC and then a "handful" of Snapdragon mobile CPUs like 820 & 821 and then some just include 10Bit h265 hardware decoding blocks like the Snapdragon 617.
Then there are a few "hybrid" software/hardware supporting Snapdragons like in a Note 4 which btw, it a beast of a phone, with 4 giant Krait 2.7 cores and runs Adreno 420 graphics yet is being destroyed by Samsung's poorly designed version of Marshmallow. These Octacore designs are already being abandoned b/c most apps can only leverage 1-2 cores and it's not secret 4 big cores are going to mop the floor with any "Big Little" design were you supposedly have 4 "bigger" cores and 4 little cores and switch between them depending on the task being asked to save on power. Sure there is some power savings but the complications in the design basically killed off any effiencies gained.
Meanwhile $850 VERY CAPAPLE phones like Note 4s w/QHD displays, 800 series Snappdragons and Adreno 420 graphics are being BRICKED by Samsung'a recently Android 6.0.1 releases. After the Note 7 chaos called on everyone in Samsung to jump in to attempt to salavage, now they struggle to even get ONE phone (S7) on Nougat 7.0, while much lesser devices like Nexus 6 already are running 7.1.1. Combine that with a rush to get their VR Gear to market, they are spread so thin that beautiful and perfectly ample devices like Note 4 are left with a barely functioning OS and no one there to work on fixing.
Their "solution" is to convince you it's obsolete when I can personally testify it can smoothly run 10Bit h265 1080p HEVC AC3 5.1 as is. I know this sounds like a bit of a tagent but point is there is issue from Apple to Samsung and making sure devices that are capable are being allowed to use their full potential. Others are being cheap and purposefully avoiding patents and leaving hardware dormant and devices like A8 chip will never see the potential given to the user who shelled out $950 thinking there IPhone 7 plus or WORSE, there $1899 could do run any technology current available. What was the hard in giving the ATV 4 ability to play h265? Over $1 and $5 design change? Roku Ultra managed it for $129 as well as the alternative to H265, VP9.
