Beta-11 definitely beyond all question breaks "restore visuals". It may work "by accident" in some cases, but it is indeed broken.

Now, the second question is whether or not the newer versions of Hijack are broken. I don't think so, but it may be possible. To help your investigation, here is some insight into how it works within Hijack.

Not that this ONLY applies to DC/CAR mode. Hijack never tries to restore visuals in AC/HOME mode, a fact that is probably confusing at least a few people, since that is normally done by the player but is also badly broken in beta-11.

Hijack looks at the flash savearea to see what info/visual mode was recorded as "active" before the last shutdown. It then changes that information to cause "Info Track" to be used instead (assuming mp3 player mode -- different handling for Tuner/Aux).

Hijack then waits until the "Info Track" information appears on the screen, by looking for the horizontal line under the Artist name line. Once that line appears, Hijack injects the required number of "INFO" button press/release codes to cause the old INFO mode to be restored.

This can break if the button press/release codes are grouped too tightly. Otherwise not.

On a possibly related note, I've been having trouble with the Source.L button lately.. let go too soon and the player powers up again. This is probably a Hijack bug, but I haven't looked too closely yet.

Maybe related?