[EXPERIMENTAL] CoreELEC 22 · samurihl DV build (20260906094636)

⚠️ 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 update to
v22.0-samurihl-20260830205205
(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, disc‑stated menu detection and episode
lists).

This release adds no new features of my own. It exists to bring the build up to
date with a week of upstream CoreELEC work, including a substantial change to how
Dolby Vision is controlled. Everything the previous release fixed — Dolby Vision
playing to a black screen, and Dolby Vision signalling left stuck on after playback
— is carried forward unchanged.

⚠️ 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 exactly as on stock CoreELEC 22,
unmodified.

(This build checks dovi.ko at boot and corrects a stack‑canary offset in RAM only
if the running kernel needs it — it never modifies your file. On recent kernels it
usually finds nothing to do. Nothing here for you to do or to verify.)

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⚠️ Read this first: this build has NOT been tested on hardware

Every previous release in this series was exercised on an AM9 Pro before it was
published. This one has not been. It is being published as-is, deliberately,
because the build is experimental and getting the upstream work out is worth more
than waiting.

What that means in practice: the rebase is verified to be correct as source — it
compiles, the fork's custom kernel patches all still apply, and the custom code is
confirmed present in the shipped binary — but no Dolby Vision playback, no disc
menu, and no display-mode behaviour has been confirmed on a real device.

If you are running the previous release and it is working for you, there is no
urgency to take this one. If you do take it, keep the previous release's .tar so
you can go back.

🔄 Dolby Vision is now driven through the display driver, not /sys

The largest change this cycle is upstream's, and it is internal: CoreELEC moved
Dolby Vision control (enable, output mode, policy, low‑latency mode, the FEL/MEL
debug switches) off /sys files and onto properties on the display driver itself.
The custom Dolby Vision code in this build has been converted to match.

You should see no difference. The two routes end at the same place in the kernel —
I checked the driver source rather than assuming, and the value each one passes
resolves to exactly the same setting. It is called out here only because it touches
every Dolby Vision path in the build, and because it is the change most likely to be
responsible if something Dolby‑Vision‑shaped misbehaves for you.

This change also requires the matching Amlogic driver update, which is included.
The two only work as a pair.

🔊 System V IPC is back on

Upstream re‑enabled System V IPC in the Amlogic kernel configuration. It had been
switched off to match Android, which broke the ALSA dmix/dsnoop plugins for
anything that opened the default audio device. Kodi itself was never affected —
it does not use that path — but add‑ons that stream or mix audio their own way
could have been. This restores normal Linux behaviour.

🎞️ Fractional refresh rates now match exactly

The 23.976 / 29.97 / 59.94 modes were derived slightly differently by the display
layer and by the player — one step apart in floating point, from the same
arithmetic. Close enough to look identical, different enough that an equality test
between them could never succeed, so the player's clock‑sync match never fired on
fractional‑rate content. Both sides now derive it the same way.

⬆️ Also from upstream

• Kodi 22.0 Beta 2.
• A DVD crash is fixed when a disc is probed for Dolby Vision dual‑layer video.
  Upstream arrived at the same fix this build was already carrying, so it is now
  upstream's version rather than mine.
• Progressive 25p and 29.97p content is no longer misreported as interlaced,
  which had been halving its frame duration.
• Tone mapping is protected against bad HDR metadata in the stream.
• Fixes for MPEG‑TS streams, H.264 stream parsing, audio/subtitle stream details,
  disc‑set detection across folders, language handling, and a ReplayGain pre‑amp
  that now centres on 0 dB and accepts fractions.
• Updated components throughout, including Mesa, curl, libCEC and WirePlumber.

✅ What was verified, and what wasn't

Verified (source and build, not hardware):

• The build compiles clean, and the custom Dolby Vision and Blu‑ray code is
  confirmed present in the shipped Kodi binary.
• All 11 custom kernel patches still apply to the updated Amlogic driver, checked
  against the actual build tree rather than just the source archive.
• The mode‑change suppression that stops Blu‑ray menu blackouts is intact and still
  refuses upstream's broader trigger — that gate is the Superman BD‑J menu fix, and
  it is the deviation from upstream most worth protecting.
• The previous release's fix for Dolby Vision engaging without a display‑mode change
  is present, and carried into upstream's restructured code. Upstream reorganised the
  function around it, so where it now sits is reasoned rather than measured — that is
  one more argument for testing Dolby Vision before trusting this build.

Not verified — no hardware test was performed for this release:

• Dolby Vision playback, television‑led or player‑led.
• Blu‑ray disc menus, HDMV or BD‑J.
• Display mode switching and the fractional‑rate behaviour above.
• Dual‑layer FEL playback and HDMI hotplug recovery (also untested last release).

If you hit something, the previous release is the known‑good comparison point.

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Source

• CoreELEC (distro): SamuriHL/CoreELEC tag v22.0-samurihl-20260906094636
• Kodi: SamuriHL/coreelec-xbmc tag v22.0-samurihl-20260906094636

Checksums (SHA256)

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f65cb9c3e8af073d5e4f77657bb5dd3904e926af145207efdacc8de232084c45  CoreELEC-Amlogic-no.aarch64-22.0-Piers-samurihl-EXPERIMENTAL_20260906094636-Generic.img.gz