Unpredictable autostart after playing with plymouth

Hello,
I have set up a 16.04 server that autostarts Kodi, based on this thread: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=231955. It was working fine.
Then I started with playing plymouth (replaced the boot animation), and now start of the Kodi UI became unreliable. After the boot animation, about 1 times in 3, the screen remains blank, even though the kodi service seems to be running.
Please advise what to check.
Thank you