I would never knowingly do anything illegal, but my understanding is that there is still considerable legal doubt about what is, and is not, legal in this field. In my view it's better to keep such a can of worms firmly closed, why go looking for trouble?
And of course I didn't read the forum rules, only the monumentally anally-rententive ever do. I'm a nice guy, never nasty to anyone (unless they really ask for it), so its not a problem.
Lets get back to the original post.
I would surmise that my issue has nothing to do with the stream source, as the problem occurs on all streams from all sources at any reasonable definition. And, the problem has only materialised recently. It didn't occur at all before the 17.6 update, using the same sources.
I'm afaid don't know where my Kodi debug logfile lives, how to identify it, or even how to extract it, in order to send it in.
I was hoping this was a well known issue that already had an answer( like "change setting x to y"). It appears I am to be disappointed.