[EXPERIMENTAL] CoreELEC 22 · samurihl DV build (20260714181459)

⚠️ 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.

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What's changed in this update

This is an incremental bug-fix update to
v22.0-samurihl-20260714111053
(see that release for the full feature rundown: VS10 on non-DV displays, the
VSVDB override fix, and the experimental tone-mapping target controls). This
build fixes three bugs found through a field report and a systematic validation
sweep of the ported Dolby Vision code, all verified on hardware.

⚠️ 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.

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🐛 Fixed

• Blank screen when converting SDR/HDR → Dolby Vision with TV-led output
  (the known issue from the previous release, reported by a user — thank you!).
  The "Dolby Vision" choice in the VS10 pickers forced the player-led low-latency
  tunnel regardless of the TV-led/player-led setting; with TV-led (the default)
  the sink was never negotiated for it. The conversion now selects the standard
  sink-led tunnel for TV-led and low-latency for player-led, matching how the
  stock SDR2DV/HDR2DV path behaves. (Verified both ways on hardware.)

• VS10-HDR10 OSD brightness stuck applied to later streams. The "OSD
  brightness" value used for VS10 HDR10 output (default 316 nits) was never
  cleared afterwards, and the kernel gives it priority over its own per-format
  graphics tables for every mode — so one VS10-HDR10 playback left the OSD /
  subtitle brightness wrong for everything after it, native DV included, until
  reboot. It is now cleared when playback stops or the mode changes, and the
  live VS10 switch now applies/clears it correctly too.

• VS10 conversion is now refused for software-decoded video. Software-decoded
  streams (codecs the hardware decoder declines, e.g. old XVID) never touch the
  hardware video layer the DV engine processes — engaging VS10 for them makes the
  sink de-tunnel plain SDR pixels as Dolby Vision (magenta/yellow corruption).
  The VS10 switch now declines with an on-screen notice for such streams
  (Bypass still works, so you can always turn it off).

✅ Validation

Beyond the fixes, this build passed a systematic sweep of the ported DV code:
every kernel interface value cross-checked against the kernel source, a live
state matrix over all VS10 output switches (TV-led and player-led), the VSVDB
override lifecycle including reverting settings after injection, verification
that all Dolby Vision state (mode, policy, targets, OSD peak) fully resets on
stop, and rapid mode-switch / play-stop stress with no crashes.

🔬 Still needs your eyes (display testing)

The plumbing above is machine-verifiable; these three need real displays:

1. Reference black / peak sweeps — with VS10 HDR10 output, sweep the new
   "VS10 target minimum luminance" setting on a 4000/10000-nit black-clip
   pattern and report where near-black patches become visible.
2. Profile 7 FEL reconstruction quality — compare a FEL title against the
   same title on a DV display or a known-good reference.
3. A/V sync over a full movie with TrueHD/Atmos passthrough.

One behaviour note: with display peak on "auto" (0), the first Smart-CMv4.0
playback reads your display's DV max luminance from EDID and writes it into
the setting — intentional, but if you later swap displays, re-set it to 0 so
it re-detects.

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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.

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Source

• CoreELEC (distro): SamuriHL/CoreELEC tag v22.0-samurihl-20260714181459
• Kodi: SamuriHL/coreelec-xbmc tag v22.0-samurihl-20260714181459

Checksums (SHA256)

3b8ed6f8c672822be7eb8842a7f2637eb3a971d5c75df57ee758be80a9153914  CoreELEC-Amlogic-no.aarch64-22.0-Piers-samurihl-EXPERIMENTAL_20260714181459.tar
db5cf0cf7401c7ac13cb3ede554c89969cdffc4a58af65e79354dadfbba20aed  CoreELEC-Amlogic-no.aarch64-22.0-Piers-samurihl-EXPERIMENTAL_20260714181459-Generic.img.gz