[EXPERIMENTAL] CoreELEC 22 · samurihl DV build (20260725153731)

⚠️ 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
v22.0-samurihl-20260724134638
(see that release and its predecessors for the standing feature set: Blu‑ray disc
menus, HDR10+ → Dolby Vision conversion, DV → HDR10 that stays in HDR10, FEL
profile‑7 reconstruction on non‑DV displays, VS10 output on non‑DV displays, VSVDB
override, tone‑mapping target controls).

This one is entirely about colour on HDR10. Everything on screen that isn't the
video itself — the Kodi interface, Blu‑ray disc menus, and subtitles — was being
colour‑encoded twice while an HDR10 disc or file was playing. The result was
washed‑out, over‑bright menus and dim grey subtitles. All three are fixed.

⚠️ 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.

---

⚠️ Read this first if you ever lowered "GUI peak luminance"

One fix in this release makes Settings → System → Display → GUI peak luminance
work again. It had been doing nothing at all on Dolby Vision output, because the
value was hard‑coded internally.

If you turned that slider down to make an over‑bright interface bearable — which
is exactly what the bug in question would have driven you to do — your menus and
interface will now look too dark, because the setting is finally being obeyed.

Set it back to 40 (the default) to get correct reference‑white graphics. Higher
values raise interface brightness; the effect is now immediate, while video is
playing, with no restart needed.

---

🖥️ The Kodi interface is no longer washed out and over‑bright on HDR10

Play an HDR10 disc or file, then bring up the home screen or settings: the interface
came up pale, grey and far too bright, while the video itself was fine.

Two different parts of the system were both applying the same colour conversion. On
Dolby Vision output Kodi has to do it; on plain HDR10 output the Amlogic hardware
already does it on the graphics layer — and Kodi was doing it as well. Colours were
squashed twice (hence the grey) and midtones lifted several stops (hence too bright),
while pure white happened to land in about the right place, which is why the effect
looked like a wash rather than obvious clipping.

Kodi now only performs that conversion when it is genuinely the only thing doing it.
Dolby Vision output is untouched by this change, by construction.

A side benefit: HLG output was getting a Dolby‑Vision‑style graphics conversion over
an HLG signal. That's fixed too.

💬 Blu‑ray subtitles are no longer dim and grey on HDR10 discs

On 4K HDR10 discs, PGS subtitles came out dull grey instead of clean white. Subtitle
graphics on an HDR disc are authored in the same wide colour space as the picture, but
were being treated as ordinary interface graphics and then encoded again — landing at
roughly a seventh of their intended brightness.

Subtitle colours are now corrected once when they're decoded, so they render at the
brightness the disc asked for. Verified against a reference player showing the same
disc.

🎬 Disc menu graphics now corrected on plain HDR10 discs, not just Dolby Vision

The menu‑graphics colour correction added in an earlier release only applied to Dolby
Vision discs. But menu artwork is authored in wide‑gamut PQ on any HDR title, so
plain HDR10 UHD discs had washed‑out menus for exactly the same reason.

The correction is now driven by what the disc itself declares about the playlist being
played, rather than by whether Dolby Vision happens to be active. It also now covers
three cases that were previously missed: a Dolby Vision disc played on an HDR10‑only
display, a DV disc with Dolby Vision switched off, and a DV disc on an SDR display.

🔧 Under the hood

• Graphics colour handling now re‑evaluates itself when the output mode changes.
  Dolby Vision output is resolved asynchronously as playback starts and as decoders
  swap; a playback session that began on one output class and settled on another kept
  using the wrong conversion for the rest of its life. It now re‑checks and corrects
  itself, while deliberately ignoring the brief transitional state seen when a disc
  switches titles, so menus don't flicker mid‑transition.
• Interface graphics conversion tables are now rebuilt safely: a failure previously
  left the interface drawing from destroyed graphics resources, which showed up as a
  completely black interface.

---

Known limitations

Being explicit about what is not fixed:

• Graphics authored brighter than 80 nits will still clip and shift hue. The discs
  this was validated against (Superman, Batman Begins) author below that. A disc that
  authors its menus brighter will look blown out rather than washed out.
• Older‑style HDMV disc menus are not corrected — only Java (BD‑J) menus and
  subtitles are. Discs using HDMV interactive menus on an HDR10 title may still show
  washed‑out pop‑up menus. This is untested rather than known‑broken: no disc with
  genuine HDMV menus was available to check.
• Subtitles on SDR discs were not re‑checked after this change. They take a
  different path that should be unaffected, but it hasn't been confirmed.

---

Source

• CoreELEC (distro): SamuriHL/CoreELEC tag v22.0-samurihl-20260725153731
• Kodi: SamuriHL/coreelec-xbmc tag v22.0-samurihl-20260725153731

Checksums (SHA256)

0281857703ccf89f44e7a8c1d33a66c12d03f4e8fc31c085ea55db260f91d093  CoreELEC-Amlogic-no.aarch64-22.0-Piers-samurihl-EXPERIMENTAL_20260725153731.tar
22ce039e1503f5c8a4110221a99ba988b556d31db31c27b0b970dc1a145da720  CoreELEC-Amlogic-no.aarch64-22.0-Piers-samurihl-EXPERIMENTAL_20260725153731-Generic.img.gz