The keyword begins with This is critical. While The Mentalist is available on streaming platforms like Max or Amazon Prime, those streams are heavily compressed. Streaming services prioritize bandwidth over bitrate, leading to "blocking" in dark scenes (common in crime scene investigation shots) and loss of film grain.
Even if you watch on an 8bit screen, the x265 decoder will dither the 10bit signal down to 8bit, resulting in a smoother image than if you had encoded it natively in 8bit. For Season One, which includes several moody, low-light episodes, the 10bit depth preserves Patrick Jane’s subtle expressions in the shadows. the mentalist s01 1080p bluray x265 hevc 10bit aac updated