Are you going to try and implement your own display? If it's not too distracting you could just use /proc/empeg_screen.[png!raw] and just update the display that way. The baud rate of the VFD serial protocol is too low for a high refresh rate but it should be okay enough to just see what's happening.

You could try and interpret /etc/empeg_notify like the lyrics viewer and attempt to work out when the player is seeking/playing/stopped etc...

- Trevor