hadesdevls/LibreELEC-Hades v1.0-rc5

LibreELEC Hades 1.0 RC5

on GitHub

LibreELEC Hades 1.0 RC5 sends Dolby Vision the way licensed players send it, in IPT, with every one of the 12 bits of an FEL film computed in floating point. Seeks no longer freeze the picture, a stream that runs dry no longer loses its pictures or its enhancement layer, the picture is in sync with the sound, and native Dolby Vision reaches older AMD graphics. Every change of this version, with the reason for it, is in the changelog.

Dolby Vision

IPT, as licensed players send it

Licensed players send Dolby Vision to the TV in IPT, the colour space of Dolby's display management, for every profile: Amlogic's licensed driver works this way, and a third-party capture of MediaTek and Amlogic players measured it. Hades now does the same for profiles 7 and 8: the picture is composed, converted to IPT in floating point and packed into the tunnel with the matrices that profile 5 films carry. The TV no longer converts the composer's YCbCr itself, so the colour between the two pixels of each 4:2:2 chroma pair no longer depends on how your TV interpolates it.

Measured on 14 FEL frames through the software bridge, and with a reference model on synthetic 12-bit pictures (a grey wedge with a marker hidden in its 4 low bits, colour gradients): within 1 code of 4095 of an ideal double-precision conversion on the samples it carries, no merged steps, and nothing added to the colour channels of a picture that has none. Profile 5 goes out byte for byte as before. Where a graphics chip cannot convert in time, the automatic step-down sends the composed YCbCr; the expert value "As composed" keeps the old way.

Starts sooner, stays in sync

• The Dolby Vision signal goes out with the change of mode, before the video's clock starts, as a black frame with valid metadata: the TV sets itself up while the video opens, the first pictures are no longer dropped, and the HDMI audio opens once. Idea from YBLOD.
• In sync with the sound: native Dolby Vision went out one refresh before its sound (50 to 77 ms at 23.976 Hz on the AMD integrated graphics). It is now timed as the ordinary output, and kodi.log gives the measured A/V offset every 10 seconds.
• Dolby Vision for the menus (option, off by default): the TV stays in Dolby Vision in the menus, so a Dolby Vision film starts without the TV changing its picture mode. Idea from YBLOD.

Seeks and streams

• A seek no longer freezes the picture and the menus for half a second. Seeking from the progress bar, a bookmark or a big step made Kodi stop drawing for up to 500 ms; over a network it took the full 500 ms every time, on every graphics chip. Kodi now keeps drawing and shows the target time at once.
• A stream that runs dry no longer loses the rest of its pictures, and an FEL film keeps its enhancement layer: the decoder starts again at the last random-access point instead of waiting for the next one. Stock Kodi drops those pictures; Hades now keeps them, and only true duplicates are removed.

More graphics and files

• Native Dolby Vision on older AMD graphics: Radeon RX 400 and 500 (Polaris), Radeon RX Vega M (Intel Kaby Lake G) and Radeon RX Vega 56, Vega 64 and Radeon VII, over HDMI, with Low-Latency. Tested on the host with the display core's own code; if you have one with a Dolby Vision TV, please report what you see.
• NVIDIA laptops whose HDMI runs through a DisplayPort output (issue #4): Dolby Vision starts again, and every change of refresh rate resets the output so that the TV takes it.
• Dual-track Dolby Vision MP4 files whose enhancement track is an ordinary HEVC track (hvc1, hev1) now play with their enhancement layer instead of as HDR10.
• 3D subtitles at the depth the disc asks for, frame by frame, on 3D Blu-ray and MVC remuxes.

HDR10+

• Dolby Vision sent as HDR10+ measures all nine percentiles of every scene (issue #10); the 5 and 10 % places carried fixed values.
• On Intel at 2160p24, 25 and 30 (issue #2), and on GTX 16 to RTX 40 and driver 580 at those modes, the first picture goes with its metadata in the change of mode, which the driver needs there.
• More NVIDIA cards: RTX 50 in a slot of its own, and GTX 16, RTX 20 and RTX 30 at 50 and 60 Hz with a TV that has HDMI variable refresh.
• Displays of HDR10+ application version 0 are recognised and sent version 0 metadata.

The menus over HDR

The menus, the OSD and subtitles over HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision keep their dark tones: they are now converted exactly, within 0.03 codes of 4095, where a dark grey could come out almost seven times too dark. Over a Dolby Vision video, menus that are opaque and still cost less GPU time, with the same bytes.

Measured, not assumed

Hades' Dolby Vision to SDR mapping was compared with the SDR grade of Netflix's Sol Levante, frame by frame: a mean ΔE ITP of 12.9, closer than BT.2390 at 100 nits (21.3), the spline (16.4) and the informative model of SMPTE ST 2094-10 Annex B (57.8). Applying the film's L2 trims to it measured no better, so Hades keeps it. RC5 adds the L3 offsets of content mapping v4.0, with the same picture bit for bit on the streams tested.

The player information and the log

• The Dolby Vision page fits its panel like the other pages: it is now two pages, Dolby Vision and Dolby Vision: pictures, with every row it had.
• Choose the Dolby Vision output of the current video from that page, or from a key with PlayerControl(HadesDVOutput).
• kodi.log says what each seek took, and what can cut out the sound of a passthrough stream (issue #8). The diagnostics record whether a laptop is on its charger.

Install and boot

• The "Installer" boot entry now installs Hades' own boot loader and boot entries, as the Windows installer does: the other internal disks stay hidden and the kernel locked down. Disks it gives an MBR table start in UEFI too, and a failed step ends in "Install Failed" with what failed, never in "Install Complete".

Up to date and safer

LibreELEC at its latest commit; nine fixes from Kodi's master, among them a stack buffer overflow in the WS-Discovery listener (on by default), a heap overflow in the closed-caption decoder and resource:// paths that could leave their folder; Mesa 26.2.6, which fixes code miscompiled on RDNA2 to RDNA4 graphics (the Ryzen 7000 integrated graphics among them); fixes for two expat vulnerabilities; tz 2026f, libjpeg-turbo 3.2.1, and fixes from OpenSSL, curl, OpenSSH, BlueZ, avahi and libbluray.

Tested

Everything that earlier versions showed working on the author's hardware still holds (see the README). What is new in RC5 has not been tried on hardware yet: it is built, reviewed independently and tested on the host and in virtual machines. Your reports, with the diagnostic switch on, are what confirms it.

Before you update

• Profiles 7 and 8 now reach the TV in IPT: colour edges may look slightly different, closer to a licensed player. "As composed" restores the old transport.
• With Dolby Vision, the TV changes mode a moment earlier, before the film's first picture.
• Dark greys of the menus and subtitles over HDR are brighter than before, as they should be.

Install or update

• New install: write the .img.gz to a USB drive with LibreELEC-Hades-Installer.exe (Windows) or any disk image writer, and boot from it. The installer can also install to a secondary internal disk without erasing it. Secure Boot must be off.
• Update: use "Update" in the installer, or copy the .tar to the Update folder of a drive with Hades and restart. Settings, add-ons and diagnostics are kept.

Dolby Vision needs an exact HDMI signal: turn off variable refresh rate and the colour adjustments of the graphics driver.

Files

Thanks

To CroqueMr, whose build started Dolby Vision on PCs; to the YBLOD build, some of whose ideas Hades rewrote its own way; to DMDreview, whose measurements showed what licensed players send; to Dom Cobley, cinema-ONE, quietvoid and everyone who reported and tested; to Netflix for the open Sol Levante masters; and to the LibreELEC and Kodi teams. The README credits each of them for what Hades took.

This is not LibreELEC and it is not official: report problems here, not to LibreELEC or Kodi. There is no warranty.

Español

LibreELEC Hades 1.0 RC5 envía Dolby Vision como los reproductores con licencia, en IPT, con los 12 bits de una película FEL calculados en coma flotante. Los saltos ya no congelan la imagen, un flujo que se queda sin datos ya no pierde imágenes ni su capa de mejora, la imagen va sincronizada con el sonido y el Dolby Vision nativo llega a gráficas AMD más antiguas.

• IPT, como los reproductores con licencia: los perfiles 7 y 8 salen en IPT, convertidos en coma flotante. Medido por software: a menos de 1 código de 4095 de la conversión ideal, sin escalones fundidos. El perfil 5 sale igual que antes, byte a byte. Si una gráfica no llega a tiempo, la reducción automática envía el YCbCr de antes.
• Empieza antes y va sincronizado: la señal Dolby Vision sale con el cambio de modo, antes de la primera imagen, y la imagen ya no va un refresco por delante del sonido. Menús en Dolby Vision como opción, apagada por defecto.
• Saltos y flujos: un salto ya no congela la imagen medio segundo, y un flujo que se queda sin datos ya no pierde el resto de sus imágenes ni la capa FEL.
• Más gráficas y archivos: Dolby Vision nativo en Radeon Polaris, Vega M y Vega; en los portátiles NVIDIA con el HDMI a través de DisplayPort (issue #4); MP4 de doble pista con hvc1/hev1; subtítulos 3D a la profundidad del disco.
• HDR10+: los nueve percentiles medidos (issue #10); Dolby Vision como HDR10+ en Intel a 2160p24, 25 y 30 (issue #2); más tarjetas NVIDIA y pantallas de versión 0.
• Menús sobre HDR con sus tonos oscuros exactos.
• Medido: el paso de Dolby Vision a SDR, comparado con el SDR de Sol Levante de Netflix, da un ΔE ITP medio de 12,9, más cerca que las alternativas medidas.
• Instalación: la entrada "Installer" deja los valores seguros de Hades y comprueba cada paso.
• Al día y más seguro: LibreELEC al día, nueve arreglos de Kodi, Mesa 26.2.6 y arreglos de seguridad en expat, OpenSSL, curl, OpenSSH, BlueZ, avahi y libbluray.

Probado: lo que ya funcionaba en las versiones anteriores sigue en pie. Lo nuevo de RC5 no se ha probado todavía en hardware. Todo, en el registro de cambios.

Instalar o actualizar: escribe la imagen .img.gz en una unidad USB con LibreELEC-Hades-Installer.exe o con cualquier programa de imágenes de disco y arranca desde ella; Secure Boot tiene que estar apagado. Para actualizar, usa "Actualizar" en el instalador o copia el .tar en la carpeta Update y reinicia; se conservan los ajustes, los complementos y el diagnóstico.

Esto no es LibreELEC ni es oficial: informa de los problemas aquí, no a LibreELEC ni a Kodi. No hay ninguna garantía.