Kodi start black until HDMI is re-connected

I have a fresh 9.2.1 installation on a RPi 3 Model B, with an HDMI connection to a Dell U2414H.

When booting, all goes well (splash screen and all) but as soon as Kodi is started the screen goes black will remain so until the HDMI cable is physically disconnected and reconnected. While it's black, HDMI signal seems OK but the image is black and blank.

Tried everything I could - config.txt tweaks, hard coded resolution in Kodi, tvservice manipulations, etc. It seems like nothing I do makes any difference and the ONLY way to get the display back once black is to physically reconnect.

Any ideas on how to solve, things to check?

Thanks!

I tried those settings, it's still the same - screen goes black when Kodi is up, until I physically reconnect the HDMI.

Update: after reconnecting the HDMI and everything is fine, restarting Kodi will get back to a black screen. So basically the issue is HDMI needs to be connected only *after* Kodi is up.

Running tvservice -p manually at any point makes no difference. If I run tvservice -o the signal stops, and tvservice -p brings it back but it's still black.

The config.txt is the default with only two added lines:

hdmi_ignore_edid=0xa5000080
hdmi_force_hotplug=1

Although dropping this and practically any other change to config.txt did not make a difference.

Thanks a lot Da Flex, this works now!

Apparently specifying hdmi_group and hdmi_mode alone is enough.