[EXPERIMENTAL] CoreELEC 22 · samurihl DV build (20260712143939)

⚠️ EXPERIMENTAL · UNSUPPORTED · USE AT YOUR OWN RISK

This is an unofficial, experimental CoreELEC 22 build. It is NOT an official
CoreELEC release and it is NOT a supported CE22 port. I am not a CoreELEC 22
port maintainer, and I will not be providing support, bug fixes, updates, or
ongoing maintenance for this build.

The only purpose of this build is to give Amlogic AM9 Pro-class users a more
complete Dolby Vision experience than stock CoreELEC 22, by carrying a set of
custom Kodi features I built for my own device. That is the entire scope.

READ THIS BEFORE YOU FLASH ANYTHING

• USE ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. There is no warranty of any kind, express
  or implied. It may fail to boot, misbehave, break Dolby Vision, or do nothing
  useful on your hardware.
• BACK UP YOUR CURRENT INSTALLATION FIRST. Take a full CoreELEC backup
  (Settings → CoreELEC → Backup) and/or image your existing boot media before
  you install anything from here. Assume you may have to restore it.
• Prefer a SEPARATE SD card or USB stick you can boot from, instead of
  overwriting a working internal (eMMC) install.
• Do NOT report problems with this build to the CoreELEC team or forums.
  This is not their build; it is not their responsibility. Do not ask them to
  support it.
• I am also not offering support. If it breaks, you keep both pieces.

By downloading or using any file in this release you accept all of the above.

Install

• Clean install (recommended): flash the *.img.gz to an SD card or USB with
  balenaEtcher (or the Amlogic USB Burning Tool for eMMC), then boot from it.
• In-place update: copy the *.tar to the /storage/.update folder on an
  existing CoreELEC install and reboot. (Back up first — see above.)
• Verify your download against the SHA256 sums below before flashing.

---

What's changed in this update

This is an incremental update to the previous experimental build
(v22.0-samurihl-20260712130155).
The feature set is otherwise unchanged — see that release's notes for the full
rundown of the Dolby Vision / audio / playback features and install instructions.
This update is all about making Dolby Vision usable on non-Dolby-Vision displays
(e.g. a Samsung HDR10 / HDR10+ TV).

⚠️ Still experimental and completely unsupported — see the disclaimer above.
Back up your current install before flashing.

Dolby Vision still requires dovi.ko (the CE22 5.15 build) installed on your
device — it is not bundled; install it yourself as on stock CoreELEC 22.

---

Dolby Vision on non-DV displays (VS10)

Previously, the entire Dolby Vision menu — the VS10 engine, VSVDB override,
Smart CMv4.0 and L5 active-area options — was hidden on any display that
doesn't advertise Dolby Vision. That's exactly backwards: VS10's whole purpose is to
convert Dolby Vision to HDR10 / SDR for displays that can't decode DV natively.

Three changes fix this:

• The DV menu now appears on non-DV displays. VS10 / VSVDB / Smart CMv4.0 / L5
  are now shown whenever the box can process Dolby Vision, regardless of what the
  TV reports. The VS10 output picker only offers modes your panel can actually take
  (Off / SDR / HDR10) and omits native-DV. Native-DV output settings (TV-LED /
  Player-LED, DV enable/disable) still require a DV-capable display, as before.

• Native DV content now converts automatically. A Dolby-Vision-only title
  (profile 5) with the default "native" output would previously show a black/broken
  picture on a non-DV TV. It now falls back automatically to HDR10 (or SDR on
  a panel without HDR10) — no settings dive required.

• Profile 7 FEL titles are now reconstructed, not flattened. 🧪 Full Enhancement
  Layer titles (dual-layer profile 7 FEL — most UHD Blu-ray DV rips) used to drop
  their enhancement layer entirely on a non-DV display and play the base HDR10 layer
  only, losing the extra highlight detail and the full grade. They are now fully
  reconstructed (base + enhancement + RPU) and tone-mapped by VS10 to HDR10 / SDR.

  ✅ Confirmed working (2026-07-12): a user verified correct FEL decoding on a
  Samsung HDR10 (non-DV) display with a screenshot. Still gathering reports across
  more profiles, titles and panels — please keep them coming (see below).

---

⚠️ Please test before trusting this — this needs real-hardware confirmation

The FEL reconstruction path (the third item above) is the experimental one. The
Kodi-side plumbing is in place and verified, but whether the Amlogic Dolby Vision
kernel driver actually performs full FEL reconstruction while outputting HDR10 to a
non-DV sink can only be confirmed on real hardware. If you have a non-DV display,
please test and report back.

What to test (on a non-DV / HDR10 TV such as a Samsung):

1. The menu shows up. Settings → CoreELEC → Dolby Vision now lists the VS10 /
   VSVDB / Smart CMv4.0 / L5 options. (Level 2 settings — set Settings to Standard
   or higher.)
2. A DV-only (profile 5) title plays with a correct picture out of the box —
   no black screen, no broken colours — as HDR10 (or SDR).
3. A profile 7 FEL title plays with its full detail. This is the important one:
   • Confirm the title is FEL, not MEL — enable Kodi debug logging and look for
     the SetDoviIsFEL / enable_fel and the BL/EL "package … arrived" merge
     lines, plus a VS10 engaged line. Their presence means the new path is active.
   • Compare the picture against the same title on a DV-capable display (or a
     known-good FEL reference). You're checking that highlight detail and the full
     grade are present — not just a flat HDR10 base layer.
4. HDR10 / HDR10+ / SDR / HLG content is unaffected and still plays normally.
5. DV-capable displays are unaffected — native DV playback should be identical to
   the previous build.

Please report results (TV model, title + DV profile, and the relevant debug-log
lines) so this can move from experimental to supported.

---

Install

• Clean install: flash the Generic *.img.gz (SD/USB via balenaEtcher, or the
  Amlogic USB Burning Tool for eMMC).
• Update in place: drop the *.tar in /storage/.update and reboot.
• Verify your download against the SHA256 sums below before flashing.
• On other Amlogic-no boards (Odroid / Khadas / Radxa): use the *.tar update, or
  your board's own image.

---

Source

• CoreELEC (distro): SamuriHL/CoreELEC tag v22.0-samurihl-20260712143939
• Kodi: SamuriHL/coreelec-xbmc tag v22.0-samurihl-20260712143939

Checksums (SHA256)

adb92ca1c21788eeab7a5387d9ee1c56e80281ad248e5c15f45c09e8a1b689a4  CoreELEC-Amlogic-no.aarch64-22.0-Piers-samurihl-EXPERIMENTAL_20260712143939.tar
3e3ad65f85f521f67c78541dbdb13cb836df2470b11a3c1bef529d71563c75f8  CoreELEC-Amlogic-no.aarch64-22.0-Piers-samurihl-EXPERIMENTAL_20260712143939-Generic.img.gz