>observation that hijack's BINDBUTTONS ioctl always
>intercepts (hijacks) the top front-panel button

Err.. It does not do that for me..
But it might be a good idea to also intercept the button RELEASE code at the same time, to avoid strange side-effects of a button release arriving in the menu/player with no corresponding PRESS code.

On a related note, you can intercept EVERYTHING by just passing an empty buttonlist.

Cheers