Audio and Display issues after upgrade

Hi folks.

I was happily running with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Kodi 16.x, and last night decided to run a system update, which pulled in the new Kodi V17. I tend to avoid system updates as they always cause issues, (for one, the old Xbox DVD remote needs its driver recompiled every time) and this time was no exception.

Its a Intel G3220 CPU with the onboard video, so uses the Intel drivers. The system is a dedicated HTPC, and boots directly into Kodi and is only controlled by remote.

With V17 installed, the video playback didnt work at all. Transpires i needed a newer video driver or something, and the fix was to upgrade to 16.04. So i upgraded to 16.04, and set off down the usual path of making it all work again!

I’ve fixed most things, but there are two issues i’m stumped with at the moment.

First of all, passthru audio. On 14.04 i didnt use PulseAudio, it simply wasnt installed. 16.04 reinstalled it, and it seems that removing it is harder on the newer versions, so i followed the instructions to turn it off (autospawn=no in the config file). Once completed Passthru was working, however HD Audio was not.

I’ve attached a debug log, showing me playing both a DTS-MA and the Dolby True HD file. With the DTS file, the reciever shows normal DTS, rather than DTS-MA. With the Dolby file, the reciever shows 2.0 PCM as the input.

The second issue, while more minor, is there seems to be some weirdness going on with mode changes on the display. For instance, when the display dims, the TV flicks black, and then pops up “HDMI1” as though theres been a mode change, then it resyncs and displays the dimmed image. Similarly when you undim the screen, the same thing happens. The screen will undim, then after a moment the TV will say “HDMI1 1080p/50hz” as though there was a mode change. Same thing happens when video playback commences. The video will start playing, audio will start, and then the display will go black, and after a moment will resync and again display “HDMI1 1080p/60hz” (or some other frequency, depending on the video)

It never used to do this on the old system at all!

Log file is here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/prjz27w4trewl7y/kodi.log?dl=0

Cheers
Kev