⚠️ 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-20260827111509
(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).

The headline is a bug you reported and were right about: the reference‑black
setting genuinely did nothing on Dolby Vision output. It does now. Alongside it
there is a new toggle that lets you compare this build's Dolby Vision conversion
against CoreELEC's own, and another upstream refresh.

⚠️ 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. You do
not need to modify it — this build corrects it automatically at boot.

⚫ Fixed: the reference‑black setting now applies to Dolby Vision output

The report. "VS10 target minimum luminance (reference black)" moved black levels
on VS10‑converted output but did nothing at all when the output was Dolby Vision —
neither for a DV title played as DV, nor for HDR10 converted to DV. A reviewer hit
the same thing back in July and correctly guessed the setting had been scoped to the
opposite direction.

Why. It had been. The player wrote the setting only for the HDR10/SDR output
modes and deliberately wrote zero for Dolby Vision, on the reasoning that with a DV
signal the television does the tone mapping, so the player's target could not matter.

That reasoning was wrong, and this release has the measurement to say so. With a
Dolby Vision title running to a Dolby Vision television, the kernel's own per‑frame
trace of the target it hands the display engine tracked the setting exactly — the
target moved the instant the value changed, and moved again when the peak was
changed. The display engine inside the box runs for Dolby Vision output too, and it
is given a target; the player was simply refusing to set it.

So the setting now applies to Dolby Vision output as well, and its name no longer
says "VS10". If black has looked crushed or lifted on DV where it looked right on
everything else, this is the knob, and it is worth a try.

Two honest limits:

• Reference black only. The peak (maximum) target stays HDR10‑only. Its Dolby
  Vision default measured 4000 nits, and pushing a typical panel figure onto that
  would clamp highlight detail the engine is currently rolling off — a different
  decision that deserves its own testing rather than riding along with this one.
• Not validated by eye. That the setting now reaches the display engine is
  measured and certain. Whether a given value looks better on your television is
  exactly what has not been tested — nobody here has put a PLUGE pattern in front of
  it. Please do, and say what you find.

🔬 New: compare this build's Dolby Vision conversion against CoreELEC's

A Dolby Vision title on a television that cannot accept Dolby Vision has to be
converted to something the display can show. This build has always done that with
its VS10 engine, forcing an explicit HDR10 output (or SDR where the panel takes
neither). CoreELEC has now added its own approach, which signals the Dolby Vision
core in low‑latency mode and lets it map to the best format the display reports.

Both are present in this build, but until now they could not be judged against each
other: ours ran second and overrode the other every time. A new setting —
"Let CoreELEC convert Dolby Vision for non-DV displays", off by default — hands
the job over so you can see which you prefer.

Scope, stated plainly:

• Non‑DV displays only. On a Dolby Vision television nothing changes.
• Only while the Dolby Vision core is actually engaged for the title. With
  "Dolby Vision source output" left at Bypass, a profile 7 or 8 title still plays as
  ordinary HDR10 and this setting does nothing.
• Off keeps exactly today's behaviour.

If you have a non‑DV HDR television and Dolby Vision material, this is the test that
would be most useful to us right now — particularly on black levels, shadow detail
and highlight roll‑off, which is where the two approaches are most likely to differ.

⚙️ Dolby Vision settings now follow the display

Upstream reworked settings visibility so it is re‑evaluated whenever the display
changes rather than decided once at startup, and this build's own Dolby Vision
settings — the VS10 pickers, VSVDB override, Smart CMv4.0, L5 and the luminance
targets — are now folded into that same mechanism. Previously they were decided at
boot and never revisited, so swapping displays mid‑session could leave the wrong rows
on screen for the rest of the session.

Also fixed while in there: the Dolby Vision output‑mode list could be left without
its options if the display attached at boot was not DV‑capable.

🔄 Upstream refresh (Kodi + CoreELEC as of 28 August)

The notable pieces this time:

• Better audio track selection on Blu‑ray. Upstream now ranks every audio codec
  the stream details can carry, treats equally ranked codecs as equally good but not
  interchangeable, and prefers codec over channel count beyond stereo — with the
  player and the library choosing the same way. Estuary also shows audio and subtitle
  language in the versions manager.
• Music tags read from Matroska files, through TagLib or FFmpeg.
• The Dolby Vision core is parked in bypass when playback closes, and display HDR
  capabilities are now read from DRM properties instead of sysfs.
• Continued work on HDMI hotplug handling.
• CoreELEC OS: OpenSSL 3.6.4, a libnfs update, and the updater now removes old update
  files before rebooting.

🛠️ Under the hood

One of this build's kernel patches — which caps the Dolby Vision target peak to the
content's own mastering peak in low‑latency output — was firing in a case it was
never written for, because a new upstream change made the low‑latency signal mean
something broader than it used to. It is now gated on Dolby Vision actually being on
the wire. Reachable only with the VSVDB override enabled on a non‑DV display, so few
people will have seen it, but it was wrong.

✅ What was tested, and what wasn't

Verified on an AM9 Pro: clean boot, Dolby Vision playback with the core engaging and
releasing correctly, seeks, flat memory across a session, audio passthrough sync
holding, and the patched kernel driver and dovi.ko correction both active. The
reference‑black finding above is a live measurement on that box.

Not tested: how the reference black and the new conversion toggle actually look
— both are asking for your eyes. Also untested this round: Blu‑ray disc menus and
dual‑layer FEL playback (unchanged by this release, but they are the paths most
exposed to an upstream rebase), and HDMI hotplug recovery, which this build
deliberately handles more conservatively than stock.

Source

• CoreELEC (distro): SamuriHL/CoreELEC tag v22.0-samurihl-20260828133811
• Kodi: SamuriHL/coreelec-xbmc tag v22.0-samurihl-20260828133811

Checksums (SHA256)

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