Dolby Vision w/FEL + 3D for PC (AMD/Intel/nVidia)

    CroqueMr's LE builds can be downloaded here.

    External Content youtu.be
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

    Current state with builds by CroqueMr, and those and/or inputs by cinemaONE, dangerouslaser and hadesdevls:

    • Full DV and full 3D with AMD graphics-based PC's, and full DV with Intel (builds linked above)
    • Full DV (no 3D) with Intel graphics-based PC's and LG's WebOS (see thread)
    • [New] Full DV and full 3D with AMD, Intel and NVIDIA-graphics based PC's (GitHub page and releases)
    • Full 3D only on AMD-graphics based PC's (see thread)

    🤜🤛 CroqueMr's is now the single, unified build as of beta4🤝.

    Recommended settings for CroqueMr's builds:

    SettingRecommended
    Hardware acceleration — VAAPION
    DRM PRIME decoderOFF
    DRM PRIME hardware accelerationOFF
    PRIME Render MethodEGL
    Render pathEGL / VAAPI
    Kodi support for DRMPRIME was designed for ARM SoC hardware using direct-2-plane rendering. With Intel/AMD, only use EGL/VAAPI
    Direct-to-Plane / D2POFF
    Asynchronous Frame PreparationON
    Dolby Vision Fast RenderingON (Try OFF for lower-end Intel, but if any skipped or dropped frames, revert to ON)
    OFF (for lower-end AMD)

    FYI on difference between Dolby Vision 'Standard' vs Dolby Vision 'Master Reference'

    • Both are TV-led, FEL-supported modes.
    • 'Standard' is Fast Rendering only; a non-Fast Standard mode no longer exists as in early builds.
    • 'Master Reference' does not use Fast Rendering. If Fast Rendering is set to Auto and it triggers while using Master Reference, playback switches to Standard and displays a notification.
    • Master Reference can be regarded as "bit-perfect," while Standard introduces only extremely small image differences, primarily involving chrominance and high-contrast edges, in exchange for substantially better rendering performance.
    • In CroqueMr's analysis, the screenshots were captured at the points of maximum difference during a 10-minute sample, and even under those worst-case conditions the differences are almost invisible.

    Bottom line: Master Reference = exactness first; Standard = practically indistinguishable image quality with substantially more performance headroom.

    CroqueMr challenges users to notice any actual visual difference during normal Dolby Vision playback. If your hardware can handle Master Reference without dropped frames or other artifacts, use it. Otherwise, Standard provides essentially the same perceived picture quality with considerably easier rendering requirements.


    Original post:

    There's some discussion in Kodi forum about DV possibility on PC. Think many would prefer PC over Android boxes. Just curious what devs, experts here think?

    CroqueMr 's pre-LE DV (including FEL) on PC work shared on reddit

    - Scroll down to post #13 for discussion on his work w/LE

    Edited 15 times, last by ht2tweak (October 21, 2026 at 9:54 PM).

  • Go to Best Answer

    It's important to understand that DV is not 'a' standard, it's a collection of them. It is technically possible to implement support for all DV requirements on PC boxes. However there are quite a few technical barriers towards that happening. There are also a pile of legal issues. The technical requirements are slowly being chipped-away at, so there is full support for Kodi on Android (on licensed hardware that follows standards) but only partial support for Kodi on Linux; there are still things missing in ffmpeg and the Linux kernel DRM architecture and hardware-specific drivers. As a result there are many dissinformation threads from DV "experts" in forums that reflect the disconnect between their opinions on on how things work, and actual facts :)

    There is currently only one known open-source implementation of FEL 5/7 and that's in OSMC, and the term open-source means only that it doesn't depend on closed-source Dolby libraries. However this open implementation depends heavily on the Amlogic vendor kernel (with its own proprietary DRM architecture) and intentionally uses OP-TEE secureworld to prevent an army of Dolby lawyers from inspecting how it's been done, so the open implementation is effectively closed.

    It all depends on how the implementation has been done. If Astra decided to decompile/reverse Dolby blobs then the outcome is illegal. If it's been done under "clean room" conditions (which arguably might be impossible with AI agents that learn from other users input) then it's probably harder for Dolby to challenge. Either way, the moment source code that works is posted or leaked somewhere things will be interesting.

    Hi,

    I’m the guy from Reddit who recently got proper Dolby Vision playback working on Linux with an Intel Ultra 5 226V.

    On the 226V in Linux, the implementation is already very close to perfect from what I can see. Across all the modern DV profiles I’ve tested, I’m not seeing playback issues, any frame drops or obvious metadata problems. The main exceptions are the older legacy profiles and profile 20, which I haven’t focused on.

    The current implementation still has noticeable rendering and memory bandwidth overhead, so performance on smaller or older iGPUs is an open question. I only perfomed tests with a 226V, which uses specific drivers.

    Right now I’m cleaning up the build, removing debug/experimental code and preparing something shareable for a public. I’m aiming to push a first version by the end of the week.


    For LibreELEC, I also want to try a native implementation on lower end Intel iGPU. I have an i7 11390H available, so that will probably be my first test platform. I will work on it in October

    I should be able to reuse around 50-60% of the current work. The main difference is that my current DV path relies on a custom mpv build. For a clean LE integration, I’d rather port the Dolby Vision handling directly into Kodi’s VideoPlayer/DRM output path instead of keeping mpv as an external player.

    For legal aspect, I don’t see any obvious issue, the work is mainly modifications to open source components (Linux/Intel DRM, mpv, FFmpeg and libplacebo) for interoperability. There is no Dolby proprietary code involved, no DRM/HDCP bypass, and obviously no claim of Dolby certification.

    That said, if any of you see potential licensing, patent or other legal concerns that I may have missed, I’d be VERY interested in your feedback. :)

    I’ve just finished cleaning up the build, and it’s now available privately on GitHub. If anyone is interested in seeing how it works, I’d be more than happy to share access.

    I’m also very, very interested in your take, chewitt, on the legal side of this before I start trying to adapt the implementation for LE.


    The high- evel overview of the impacted components and patches is as follows:

    ComponentPatchesPurpose
    Linux / Intel display10DRM/KMS validation and HDMI signaling
    FFmpeg3Metadata preservation and AV1 container recognition
    mpv10Frame-associated metadata, transport packing and display restoration
    libplacebo2OpenGL subgroup discovery and guarded affine dispatch

    Well... of course it would not be ideal, but if it needed, this could be a patch/script completely independent from official LE (like the infamous 12/10 bit issue on N100).

    I’ve started working on a LE build with DV support, initially targeting the 11390H.


    The good news is that the driver/kernel changes are largely shared with my mod with the 226V in Kubuntu and mpv. They could potentially cover a wider range of intel CPU, including the N100/150 although compatibility still needs to be verified on each platform, performance is an open question on small iGPU

    The Kodi integration requires substantial changes beyond the driver work. I’ll be digging deeper into that with GPT-6 Astra this weekend