Kodi 18 "Leia" has landed in the repo

ermo Have you checked out the included binary add-ons?

Well, I don't see Emulators category.

To get the game emulator addons, browse to Addons > Download > Install from Repository > Kodi Addon-Repository > Game Addons > Emulators
You will see a listing of available game addon emulators for your system. You will need at least one emulator for each system you're interested in playing.

From Getting Started with Kodi Retroplayer
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=340684

Game emulator addons are available in the Kodi repository for Windows, OSX, Android and LibreElec users.

Game emulator addons are available in the Kodi nightly ppa for Linux users. You can download the game addons individually using these commands:

ermo Well shit. I'm currently away from home. I'll rip a DVD when I get home and test it over the weekend.

I've tried to reinstall it with a clean profile - same white rectangle instead of subs. Flatpak version works fine btw.
Tested on another PC: no problem.

I've also noticed some differences between Kodi versions.

On Intel GPU PC there is no Allow hardware acceleration - VAAPi option (Settins > Player > Videos).
Flatpak version has it.

On NVIDIA GPU PC there is an Allow hardware acceleration - VDPAU option.

I have installed Solus Budgie in VM with latest updates.
White rectangle instead of subs:

Kodi doesn't seem to like my Nvidia....
libva info: VA-API version 1.4.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri/nvidia_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_1
GPU at BusId 0x1 doesn't have a supported video decoder
/usr/bin/kodi: riga 219: 8647 Eccezione in virgola mobile ${KODI_BINARY} $SAVED_ARGS
"Eccezione in virgola mobile" (I'm italian) translates to "Floating point exception"

The crash log itself (which I can't attach, neither in zip or txt form) reports only three errors:
2019-04-21 09:49:38.334 T:140671384513280 ERROR: DBus error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.InvalidArgs - Proprietà «OnLowBattery» inesistente
2019-04-21 09:49:38.335 T:140671384513280 ERROR: DBus error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.InvalidArgs - Proprietà «CanSuspend» inesistente
2019-04-21 09:49:38.336 T:140671384513280 ERROR: DBus error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.InvalidArgs - Proprietà «CanHibernate» inesistente
The DBus errors refer to missing properties.

Some relevant inxi info:
System: Host: corvus-ultra Kernel: 5.0.7-114.current x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Budgie 10.5 Distro: Solus 4.0
Machine: Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: UX310UQK v: 1.0 serial: <filter>
Mobo: ASUSTeK model: UX310UQK v: 1.0 serial: <filter> UEFI: American Megatrends v: UX310UQK.300 date: 10/03/2016
Battery: ID-1: BAT0 charge: 41.2 Wh condition: 44.7/48.3 Wh (92%)
CPU: Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core i7-7500U bits: 64 type: MT MCP L2 cache: 4096 KiB
Speed: 900 MHz min/max: 400/3500 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 900 2: 900 3: 900 4: 900
Graphics: Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 620 driver: i915 v: kernel
Device-2: NVIDIA GM108M [GeForce 940MX] driver: nvidia v: 418.56
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.3 driver: modesetting,nvidia resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: GeForce 940MX/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 418.56
Audio: Device-1: Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.0.7-114.current
Network: Device-1: Intel Wireless 8260 driver: iwlwifi
IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: <filter>
IF-ID-1: br-27ce4dce64ce state: down mac: <filter>
IF-ID-2: br-69d182fd9cf7 state: down mac: <filter>
IF-ID-3: docker0 state: down mac: <filter>
Drives: Local Storage: total: 1.38 TiB used: 898.25 GiB (63.8%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST1000LM035-1RK172 size: 931.51 GiB
ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: SanDisk model: SD8SN8U512G1002 size: 476.94 GiB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 29.91 GiB used: 21.33 GiB (71.3%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdb2
ID-2: /home size: 438.29 GiB used: 263.19 GiB (60.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdb3
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 42.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 41 C
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info: Processes: 277 Uptime: 1d 15h 30m Memory: 15.61 GiB used: 3.51 GiB (22.5%) Shell: fish inxi: 3.0.32

I've used kodi on this same machine in the past and it worked, the current bork could be Nvidia related since last time I was running on Intel drivers.....

CorvusRuber have you tried flatpak Kodi version?

Solarmass
No flatpaks and no snaps on my system, thank you very much.
By the way, I'm not even using Kodi, at the moment. I've only installed it to try the new version and see if there was something that could convince me to install it permanently

Kodi "Leia" 18.2 Release!
https://kodi.tv/article/kodi-leia-182-release

A big THANK YOU for bringing Kodi onto Solus! I had Kodi running (bad) on a WIN10 machine; I formatted it, installed Solus on it, installed Kodi via SC, and now it works like a charm; even the TV channels that didn't work on Win work perfectly now.
THANK YOU again!

libva-intel-driver is a Intel VAAPI graphics driver intended to sit in userspace and be explicitly supported / requested by applications that require accelerated encoding and decoding functionality on Intel platforms. It doesn't warrant being pre-installed on the ISO until such a point is reached where the vast majority of multimedia libraries require it (and they''d automatically pull it into the ISO when that's the case anyways).

So in my opinion, it would make sense for now to have it be a rundep of specifically applications which support it, such as Kodi. I'd like some validation if possible on AMD systems just to make sure that adding the Intel VAAPI driver isn't going to be problematic (shouldn't but ya know, never hurts to test). If there isn't anyone that immediately raises their hand that has AMD hardware to test, I can work with @ermo to validate it.

ermo For how long?

I will test it this week. I didn't wait, just restarted the app.

I would expect CPU utilisation to drop off once the various initialisation stuff is done...

I think I have this problem on previous kodi version (I have it in Autostart). I also have two addons installed