Comparing with VLC will lead to nothing as it does not use VAAPI for uploading the decoded surfaces. You can test mplayer-vaapi / mpv with vaapi output to see the issue. From a first point of view I think this change did not break the decoder but the transfer of decoded surfaces to GLX via vaputSurface, which would be really critical not only for kodi.
Comparing with VLC will lead to nothing as it does not use VAAPI for uploading the decoded surfaces. You can test mplayer-vaapi / mpv with vaapi output to see the issue. From a first point of view I think this change did not break the decoder but the transfer of decoded surfaces to GLX via vaputSurface, which would be really critical not only for kodi.