⚠️ 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 a follow‑up fix to
v22.0-samurihl-20260919142117,
published a few hours earlier today. If you are on that build, this one matters —
especially if you have refresh‑rate switching turned off.

⚠️ 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: Dolby Vision switching did nothing if refresh‑rate switching was off

If Settings → Player → Videos → Adjust display refresh rate is set to Off,
switching Dolby Vision output during playback changed the Dolby Vision engine but
never changed the HDMI signal to match. The box would be producing Dolby Vision
while the TV was still being fed the desktop's picture format.

What you saw depended on your TV or AV chain. On a forgiving one, Dolby Vision at the
wrong bit depth — a reporter saw "DV‑Std, 10‑bit RGB" where the 8‑bit RGB tunnel was
expected. On a stricter one, no Dolby Vision at all: on the test box here the
engine engaged while the TV's signal stayed plain SDR, with nothing on screen to say
so. Starting the video again put it right, which is what made it look intermittent.

This also meant the two Dolby Vision fixes in this morning's release could not take
effect at all for anyone with refresh‑rate switching off — the path that restores
the TV's normal picture format on the way out of Dolby Vision was blocked in the
same way. If you tried this morning's build with that setting off and saw no
improvement, this is why. Please try again.

Why: the code that re‑checks the HDMI picture format was reached only when Kodi was
allowed to change the refresh rate, which has nothing to do with it. Those are now
two separate questions. Refresh‑rate switching stays off if you have it off —
Kodi still will not change your display mode. It just no longer skips the check that
keeps the HDMI colour format correct.

🛠️ Also confirmed fixed from this morning's release

The same reporter noted SDR starting at 10‑bit YUV444, going to Dolby Vision, and
coming back stuck at 8‑bit — with a second press of Original changing nothing.
That is the fault fixed in 20260919142117; it was reproduced here on the older
build and confirmed resolved. Combined with the fix above, it should now hold
whichever way you have refresh‑rate switching set.

✅ Blu‑ray menus checked on real discs

The previous notes listed disc menus as untested. They have now been run, and they
behave:

• A non‑Dolby‑Vision disc (a TV season disc) — the disc session ends and hands the
  HDMI format back correctly.
• A Dolby Vision BD‑J disc with full menus, including its seamless branch points —
  menus, navigation and playback all normal.

The thing most at risk from these changes was a disc session needlessly re‑training the
HDMI link between segments, which would show as a multi‑second black gap at every
menu↔title transition. Across a full BD‑J session with repeated segment swaps there were
no link re‑trains at all — the session holds the link exactly as designed, and the
one re‑train in the log is the correct one, at the end of the non‑Dolby‑Vision disc.

If you see BD_EVENT_READ_ERROR in a log around a menu loop, it is not a disc or
network fault: libbluray raises it on the short final unit at the end of a menu
segment, immediately before "End of title". Harmless.

⚠️ Still wanted: your ears

• Audio/video sync across a live Dolby Vision switch. Leaving player‑led Dolby
  Vision now re‑trains the HDMI link where it previously did nothing; that briefly
  pauses and re‑anchors playback. Nobody has listened for lipsync drift across it yet —
  this is the one part of these changes with no verification behind it.

Under the hood

• CRenderManager::UpdateResolution() gated the window update on
  ADJUSTREFRESHRATE != OFF. The live VS10 wire re‑decide (1c61a92be8) routes
  through TriggerUpdateResolution() into that gate and out to CreateNewWindow,
  which is where aml_output_wire_stale(), apply_dv_wire_format() and the
  RESERVED6 hand‑back live — so with the setting off, none of it ran.
• Mode selection still honours the setting; the window update no longer does. With
  the setting off the incumbent resolution is passed through, and CreateNewWindow
  still early‑returns unless the HDR type, stereo mode or DV wire actually changed.
• Reproduced on an AM9 Pro before the fix: vs10.dv left dolby_vision_enable=Y,
  dolby_vision_mode=1 with the wire on 12‑bit YUV422 and the sink's EOTF on SDR;
  the log showed VS10 output mode 1 with no wire_format_mismatch and no
  apply_dv_wire_format at all.

Source

• CoreELEC (distro): SamuriHL/CoreELEC tag v22.0-samurihl-20260919163542
• Kodi: SamuriHL/coreelec-xbmc tag v22.0-samurihl-20260919163542

Checksums (SHA256)

53870f125de9f16e845fa9752cb55684b1a1fd44f833d74d07c3cdf11fc2a735  CoreELEC-Amlogic-no.aarch64-22.0-Piers-samurihl-EXPERIMENTAL_20260919163542.tar
3169c3f4abe672164f3bde8c92f0bb3576d860ece70511c85e369e52300fd471  CoreELEC-Amlogic-no.aarch64-22.0-Piers-samurihl-EXPERIMENTAL_20260919163542-Generic.img.gz