⚠️ 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 the last regular release,
v22.0-samurihl-20260928164552.
It brings the build up to current CoreELEC 22 and Kodi 22, with everything
upstream has fixed since late September, and adds a set of bug fixes found
while working on the next generation of this build.

⚠️ Still experimental and completely unsupported. See the disclaimer above.
Back up your current install before flashing (Settings → CoreELEC → Backup).

• To go back: copy the previous release's .tar into /storage/.update and
  reboot, or do a clean install of that release.
• 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.

If you are coming from the October 14 testing build

v22.0-samurihl-20261014135811
was a one-off testing build of new timing code (one clock for picture and
sound). This release does not contain that code. It is built from the regular
release line, so picture and sound timing work as in the September 28 release.
A few standalone fixes from that work are included (listed below). Others,
including the Deep Space Nine sync fix, are part of the new timing code and
are not in this release.

✨ Up to date with CoreELEC 22 and Kodi 22

The whole build has been rebuilt on top of today's upstream CoreELEC 22 and Kodi 22.
That brings in hundreds of upstream changes: a newer kernel, updated system
packages and add-ons, and Kodi's own fixes, among them:

• Blu-ray library: fixes from Kodi mainline for Blu-ray titles in the video
  library, including preferring the Dolby Vision copy of a playlist.
• CEC: Kodi now shuts the CEC adapter down properly when it quits (an upstream
  fix for the CEC connection never being closed at exit).
• Audio and player: a clean AC-3/E-AC-3 encoder after a seek or pause (no pop
  when transcoding), plus several smaller mainline fixes.
• MVC, thumbnails, memory, AV1 Dolby Vision: assorted upstream fixes.

Some upstream changes are deliberately not included, because this build has
its own tested versions of the same features and the two can't be combined
safely yet:

• upstream's new Blu-ray navigation series and its Dolby Vision base/enhancement
  layer pairing rework (this build keeps its own Blu-ray menu and FEL handling);
• upstream's changes to audio start sync (this build keeps its own,
  millisecond-accurate passthrough landing);
• upstream's reworked VS10 / HDR output and vsync-thread presentation;
• a few changes that were turned down in earlier releases (fractional frame-rate
  handling, an audio sink back-off).

The kernel's Dolby Vision driver stays on the version this build's Dolby Vision
patches are made for.

🛠️ Fixed: Dolby Vision

• HDR10 after a Dolby Vision film. With "SDR → HDR" on, after a Dolby Vision
  film the desktop, and the next HDR10 film, went out in SDR until you
  rebooted. The box now hands the HDMI link back after every Dolby Vision film.
• A Dolby Vision disc session could end mid-film. A background read of a
  Blu-ray's details (duration, stream info) could end the Dolby Vision session of
  the film playing. The picture dropped out of the box's Dolby Vision handling.
• FEL discs after a seek or fast-forward. On some Dolby Vision FEL discs the
  picture could freeze after a seek or fast-forward, and then Stop and reboot
  hung until you pulled the power. Fixed in the video decoder.
• FEL disc freeze at a timeline restart. On FEL discs a 2.5-second freeze
  could happen where a title restarts its timeline. Fixed.
• VS10 tone mapping choice. With HDR10+ → Dolby Vision on and a Dolby Vision TV,
  your VS10 choice of tone mapping to SDR or HDR10 was overridden. It now wins.

🛠️ Fixed: audio

• 5.1 / 7.1 PCM on S922X boxes (Ugoos AM6B class) with a 7.1 setup: multichannel
  PCM, for example AAC 5.1, played at one third speed. It now goes out
  through the right HDMI path.
• Blu-ray seeks with TrueHD: after a seek, Kodi could mistake TrueHD for
  DD+, so your AV receiver flipped formats for a moment. It now only looks for
  the format the disc says it carries.
• Blu-ray seeks: about one disc seek in 70 (chapters, fast-forward return, menu
  jumps) could throw the timeline back 10–35 seconds with audio well out of sync.
  Fixed.

🛠️ Fixed: picture and HDMI

• TV or AV receiver reconnect during a film: a 23.976 film could stay at 60 Hz
  for the rest of the file, and after a reconnect at a different resolution the
  video could sit in a small window in the corner. Both fixed.

🛠️ Also fixed

• Safe mode after five crashes, however far apart: a script error meant the
  box counted every Kodi crash since boot, not just the last 15 minutes. Fixed.
• "Disable GUI scaling" over JSON-RPC froze Kodi. Fixed (remote apps that change
  this setting).
• A paused film near its end used a whole CPU core. Fixed.
• "Enable debug logging" no longer forces the on-screen debug overlay.

⚠️ How much this build was tested

Less than usual, and on one box. It was checked on an S922X (G12B, Ugoos AM6B)
only:

• Audio sync: 23.976, 24 and 25 fps test films with TrueHD, DTS-HD MA, DD+,
  DD, PCM and FLAC: every track landed within about a millisecond after a
  track switch, with no later correction.
• Dolby Vision FEL: a FEL test file, and an FEL Blu-ray played directly through
  six seamless joins: no freeze, no dropped frames, no audio correction at the
  joins.
• The fixes above that can be checked from the logs.

Not tested for this build: Blu-ray menus, how the picture looks on a TV (Dolby
Vision, HDR10, subtitles, menus), PlexMod and skins by eye, and anything on
S905X5 (S6) boxes. Reports welcome.

⚠️ Known issue

• PCM audio can start up to 30 ms off. When a film starts on PCM (not
  passthrough) right after the TV changes refresh rate, the sound can land up to
  about 30 ms from the picture and stay there. This is how the previous release
  behaves too; it is not new. Passthrough lands within about a millisecond.

Credits

Thanks to everyone whose upstream CoreELEC and Kodi work is included:
Rudi Heitbaum, Portisch, Christian Hewitt, 78andyp, Chris, Matthias Reichl, Garrett
Brown, Malard, Jernej Skrabec, Andrey Filipenkov, afl1, Arthur Liberman, ksooo,
Markus Härer, Martin Ellis, Sam Nazarko, Dom Cobley, Kel Modderman, KOPRajs,
matthane and many more.

Under the hood

• Rebase: both forks rebased onto upstream (CoreELEC 9837c7dc29, Kodi
  961a32250a); upstream's rejected series are reverted as explicit commits on the
  new base, before this build's own stack.
• common_drivers stays pinned to f9af0b41: newer upstream turns
  FLAG_USE_SINK_MIN_MAX off, which this build's Dolby Vision patches rely on.
• Front-to-back GUI rendering is kept on (upstream had dropped the commit that
  turns it on).
• RenderManager: frame selection now holds the same display-phase branch audio
  syncs to, including right after a seek or pause (debug logging per sync window).
• New kernel/driver patches: common_drivers 0022 (DV link hand-back), media_modules
  0004 (dual-layer first-picture fast output once).

Source

• CoreELEC (distro): SamuriHL/CoreELEC tag v22.0-samurihl-20261030200017
• Kodi: SamuriHL/coreelec-xbmc tag v22.0-samurihl-20261030200017

Checksums (SHA256)

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