Thanks for the post.
I am having the exact same problem - but didn't have the time to put 2 & 2 together on it.
If I have visualizations turned on in 8.0.224 and try to play a song in 'Playing Now', it crashes back to the desktop every time. Interestingly enough, if the visualization is played in an external window it works fine.
Anyway, I put it on Track Info instead of Visualization and now I'm fine.
Incidentally the Help file was NO help on this. It doesn't happen to mention that you can't seem to actually change the Visualization setting unless a media file is PLAYING. The 'Display Plugin' option on a right click simply is NOT THERE. So being a new user to this program, I was getting REALLY PO'ed that what it was saying in the help documentation did not exist at all (until a file is being played). *EXTREMELY* annoying.
Jason Bottjen