So for Kodi 17 I ended up formatting my SD card on my pi3 and reinstalling afresh, when it booted up hooked it up to my tvheadend server and realised I’d have to hunt for my licenses to watch the playback… But randomly clicked on a channel to see if it was all setup, last time I tried on my setup I just got audio, BUT I got picture and audio.
Just wondered if this is a feature of OSMC not to need the licenses or something else
A Pi3 always was capable to play certain MPEG-2 files in software, most likely the improvements in the Kodi videoplayer just extend that capabilities. But there are most likely still many MPEG-2 files the Pi3 will not play without the GPU help.
Also watch your CPU cooling, it might run hot when decoding MPEG-2
I already was watching SD MPEG-2 files on my Pi3 on Jarvis without licence keys. Only on my Pi1 and Pi2 I have the keys.
There was also a change in the firmware for RPi that sets a one time bit in hardware if codec has been enabled. I don’t know if OSMC has included that firmware yet but if it has then it would explain this behaviour.
You can check from command line to see if codec is enabled. If it is and you do not have it in config.txt then the firmware did it for you.
Yes, that firmware is already included. So a single boot with a correct licence key would have stored it permanently.