One piece of advice: We are just finishing up a project that uses a 4 digit 7-seg LCD display for an RPM readout on a tachometer....

Driver IC's are expensive, but if you're only making one or two, they are defintely worth it. Make sure that whatever LCD you end up using, it has some sort of multiplexed input driver IC. We tried to write our own with PLD type architecture... what a pain. The drivers are worth the money.

- Steph -