[EXPERIMENTAL] CoreELEC 22 · samurihl DV build (20260909193640)

⚠️ 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

⚠️ Ugoos firmware 2.2.0 is still REQUIRED

If your AM9 or AM9 Pro is on firmware 2.1.0 or older, do not install this build.
You will get no picture. This is unchanged from the previous release, not a new
condition — but it is worth repeating, because it is the one thing that will stop
your box booting.

The full explanation, and the update order that carries your box across the
firmware change without ever showing you a black screen, are in
v22.0-samurihl-20260909114220.
The short version: put the update in place, reboot from eMMC/NAND into Android,
update the firmware there, then reboot — CoreELEC finds the waiting update and
installs it, already on the firmware it needs.

If you are already on 2.2.0, nothing here affects you.

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This is an incremental update to
v22.0-samurihl-20260909114220
(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).

⚠️ 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.

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One change: two new CMv4.0 metadata modes

Everything else in this build is identical to the previous release. If neither of
the two situations below describes you, there is nothing here you need.

Background, in one paragraph

Dolby Vision titles carry their grade in one of two versions of Dolby's Content
Mapping metadata: the older CMv2.9 or the newer CMv4.0. This build has long
been able to add CMv4.0 metadata to a CMv2.9 title, which generally improves shadow
detail and black level. That setting lives at
Settings → System → Dolby Vision → CMv4.0 metadata (it used to be called
"Append CMv4.0 metadata"; the name changed because it can now also take metadata
away). Your existing choice is preserved — nothing is reset by this update.

The setting gains two new positions.

"Auto" — decide once per film, from how the film was mastered

The existing Smart mode re-decides on every single frame: it adds CMv4.0 while
the picture stays within what your display can show, and falls back to the original
CMv2.9 grade on brighter frames so their trims still apply. That is the right
behaviour for most people, and it stays the recommendation.

Auto asks a different question, once, at the start of the film: was this title
mastered somewhere my display can actually follow? If yes, use CMv4.0 for the whole
film. If not, leave it as CMv2.9. A companion setting, CMv4.0 auto trigger,
chooses what "somewhere my display can follow" means:

• Display peak — use CMv4.0 when your display's peak brightness is at or above
  the brightness the title was mastered at.
• 1000 / 2000 / 4000 / 10000 nits — use CMv4.0 when the title was mastered at or
  below that figure, regardless of your display.

Either way, a title that carries no trims at all still gets CMv4.0, because there is
nothing to preserve by leaving it alone.

Why you might prefer it to Smart. Smart's decision can change from frame to
frame, and on player-led (low-latency) Dolby Vision output that is a problem: the
television re-acquires Dolby Vision every time the metadata version changes, which is
why Smart is quietly pinned to "Always" in that mode. Auto's decision is fixed for
the whole film, so it works properly on player-led output — the metadata version on
the cable never moves.

One thing to know about the Display peak trigger: it needs to know your display's
peak brightness. If that cannot be read from your display and you have not entered it
under Display peak luminance (nits), the comparison can never succeed and Auto
falls back to only treating titles that carry no trims. The log says so plainly when
it happens. The four fixed-nit triggers do not consult your display at all and are
unaffected.

Ported from avdvplus R10 — the separate CoreELEC 21 / Amlogic-ng Dolby Vision
build credited at length in the previous releases — where this mode is also called
"Auto". Adapted to this fork's structure.

"Strip to CMv2.9" — for older Dolby Vision televisions that black-screen

This one is not for most people, and if your television handles CMv4.0 content
normally you should ignore it.

Some earlier Dolby Vision televisions only ever understood CMv2.9. They were supposed
to ignore the parts of CMv4.0 they could not read and carry on — but a number of them
do not: they show a black screen with no on-screen display at all on CMv4.0
content, and there is nothing you can do from the box's side to talk them round.

Strip to CMv2.9 removes the CMv4.0 layer from titles that carry it, handing the
television a plain CMv2.9 stream it can lock onto. It is the exact opposite of the
append modes above, which is why it shares the same setting rather than being a
separate switch you could accidentally set against them.

Two things worth knowing:

• It only applies to TV-led Dolby Vision output. That is the only mode where your
  television reads the Dolby Vision metadata itself. On player-led output, or when
  VS10 is converting to HDR10 or SDR, this box is doing the tone mapping and the
  metadata never reaches your television — stripping there would only take the better
  grade away from the box's own processing. The build detects this and does nothing.
• It only acts on titles that actually carry CMv4.0. A CMv2.9 title is left
  completely untouched.

The idea and the original implementation are pannal's, from their CoreELEC 21
Kodi fork, where it was added for exactly this problem. It had never been carried
across to CoreELEC 22 by anyone — not even by the builds that inherited the rest of
that Dolby Vision work — so this is that feature brought forward.

Please report back if you have one of these televisions. This is the one change
in this release that could not be tested against the hardware it exists for —
neither display available to this fork is a CMv2.9-only set, which is precisely why
the problem never showed up here. The code does what it says on the metadata, and
the log confirms it, but whether it rescues your particular television is something
only you can tell me.

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Source

• CoreELEC (distro): SamuriHL/CoreELEC tag v22.0-samurihl-20260909193640
• Kodi: SamuriHL/coreelec-xbmc tag v22.0-samurihl-20260909193640

Checksums (SHA256)

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