⚠️ 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 update follows
v22.0-samurihl-20260923165125.
It fixes BD‑J Blu‑ray screens that play no video. The John Wick 3 resume prompt
used to leave a black screen. It also moves the build onto the latest upstream
CoreELEC 22 code.

⚠️ 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: black screen on BD‑J menus that show no video (e.g. John Wick 3 resume)

Some discs remember where you stopped. When you insert one again, it asks whether to
resume before it plays any video. John Wick 3 (UHD, Lionsgate) does this. Here that
prompt never appeared: the screen stayed black, the remote did nothing, and Stop could
leave Kodi on a black screen. The workaround going around was to delete the disc's
saved data on every start. That hides the prompt instead of showing it.

The cause. Kodi waited for the disc to start a video before it did anything else.
Until then it didn't answer the remote, didn't switch to the player screen, and
didn't draw the disc's menu graphics. The disc was waiting for an answer to a question
Kodi never showed.

The fix. When a BD‑J disc shows a screen with no video, Kodi now waits alongside
it. After about three seconds with menu graphics up and still no video, it treats the
screen as a menu. It opens the player screen, draws the graphics over black, and
passes your remote presses to the disc. Once you pick an option and the film starts,
playback continues as normal.

On Dolby Vision discs, this one screen is shown without Dolby Vision, since there's
no video for Dolby Vision to carry. Dolby Vision comes back when the film starts. You
may see the TV resync once each way.

Other discs are unaffected. Discs that start a video within those three seconds
never enter this mode. Superman UHD and M3GAN 2.0 were re‑checked on the test box and
start as before.

🛠️ Added: disc background images and colours (BD‑J menus)

The Blu‑ray standard gives BD‑J menus a background layer that sits behind
everything else. It can hold a solid colour or a still image. libbluray, the Blu‑ray
library Kodi uses, had never implemented it, so discs that drew into it got nothing.
John Wick 3 uses it. This build implements that layer. Kodi shows it only on screens
where no video is playing, like the resume prompt above. While a film or menu video is
playing, the video covers it, as on a standalone player.

Not yet confirmed on screen. On the discs tested so far, nothing has appeared in
this layer. For Superman UHD that is expected. For John Wick 3 it is still being
investigated. Either way, nothing you see changes: the resume prompt and its artwork
are drawn by the disc's normal menu graphics.

If you use the "JRE for BD‑J menus" add‑on: it ships its own copy of libbluray's
Java part, usually an older one. Kodi now uses the copy that comes with this build, so
the add‑on's older copy no longer overrides it. The add‑on is still needed. It provides
Java itself.

🔄 Updated: latest upstream CoreELEC 22

This build is rebased onto the current upstream CoreELEC 22 Kodi branch. It brings in
the recent Kodi and Amlogic fixes. Everything from the previous releases was
re‑checked on the test box afterwards: PGS subtitle colours, HDR disc menus, BD‑J menu
smoothness, seamless branching and TrueHD resume.

Upstream added its own HDR GUI change the same day. It does the same job as this
build's existing HDR GUI and subtitle handling, which stays in place. Upstream's
version is not used.

⚠️ Still wanted

• Other discs that open on a screen with no video. If one still shows black, send a
  debug log with the name of the disc.
• SDR output. The tone‑mapped route for subtitles and menus on SDR TVs still has
  not been checked on screen. Reports welcome.

Under the hood

• CVideoPlayer::Prepare() defers opening the demuxer while libbluray reports a BD‑J
  title waiting for playback, via the new bd_bdj_waiting_for_playback() (libbluray
  patch 07). The player loop polls the events while waiting and starts "menu‑only" after a 3 s grace. Menu‑only needs an
  open IG/PG composition and no video or audio stream. Graphics are drawn with no
  renderer configured (RenderWithoutPicture).
• On Dolby Vision disc sessions, menu‑only releases the pre‑engaged DV disc engage.
  Its graphics are drawn to match the disc's initial dynamic range. The existing
  per‑segment OpenStream path re‑engages DV for the first DV playlist.
• libbluray patch 07: HAVi HBackgroundDevice / HBackgroundConfiguration /
  HStillImageBackgroundConfiguration rendered into the BD_OVERLAY_BG ARGB plane. It
  uses a new JNI entry, updateBackgroundN, registered last, so a mismatched jar can't
  break the other natives. Kodi composites that plane only while no playlist is
  playing. ARGB CLOSE is now per plane.
• libbluray patch 08: the jar installed with libbluray (/usr/share/java) is preferred
  over LIBBLURAY_CP. The JRE add‑on's profile sets LIBBLURAY_CP to its own copy.
• Rebase onto upstream f0103ab915. Upstream's HDR GUI series (0b4415b824,
  018b2df52a, 9cc72faa4c) is reverted in favour of this build's composite.
  cpm's Render‑before‑RenderEx order is kept. Mainline's 10 ms VideoPlayerAudio
  sleep (05228e5d03) is reverted: it capped the audio thread's output rate during
  normal playback.

Source

• CoreELEC (distro): SamuriHL/CoreELEC tag v22.0-samurihl-20260923194837
• Kodi: SamuriHL/coreelec-xbmc tag v22.0-samurihl-20260923194837

Checksums (SHA256)

1399f349d825793a52416c0a76e0ca6b12a8c3840b3cb2462f74fb2e17414861  CoreELEC-Amlogic-no.aarch64-22.0-Piers-samurihl-EXPERIMENTAL_20260923194837.tar
bdc3a4a50bd045195f3945b297f7f9df24490280a4f4b512d8b05162381d2d65  CoreELEC-Amlogic-no.aarch64-22.0-Piers-samurihl-EXPERIMENTAL_20260923194837-Generic.img.gz