Director Flash 8 xtra breaks shared object and onSync

This one has driven me insane for days, but at least now I know what the problem is. It's really a Director-Flash8 xtra-FMS problem, but I figure the best chance for a solution is posting it here.

The problem is this: The Director Flash 8 xtra update messes up remote shared object connections to FMS applications. The Management Console debugger does not show any SO properties ("no data"), and only the "clear" onSync event fires. The old Flash 7 xtra worked/works fine. To illustrate, I've tested the following code in the Director message window with both the v8 and v7 xtra (if you know Actionscript and not Lingo, it's still easy to figure out what happens here). It basically creates and connects a remote shared object on FMS:

rrr = newObject("SharedObject")
nnn = newObject("NetConnection")
sss = "rtmp:/apptest01" -- app on locally running FMS
er = nnn.connect(sss)
put er
-- 1
fff = rrr.getRemote("tester", nnn.uri, true)
put fff
-- <flash object>
er = fff.connect(nnn)
put er
--1
-- so it's all good until here. onSync callback works with "clear", etc, but...
fff.data.foo = 55.5
put fff.data.foo
-- 55.5... but only shows in Mgmt Console when using the v7 xtra...
-- when using the old flash7 xtra,
-- debugging the FMS app and onSync events works correctly,
-- but when using flash8 xtra,
-- debugging the FMS app shows "no data" for this shared object. foo = 55.5 should be there.
-- also, onSync events no longer fire after the initial "clear".

If I translated this into actionscript and ran it in Flash 8 vs Flash 7, etc, would I get the same problem? I'll try that next, but it took me a while to get this far. Is it simply a matter of permission or firewall setting? Or is it something just broken with the Director flash 8 xtra?

Thanks