joe,
i would like to stay on point, which goes back to post #5: you have updated on the admin side, but you cannot display it on the customer side. i then quoted 2 possibilities, which is you are either not modifying the correct template file or you are not getting the data correctly from the database.

based on the information you have posted, you are modifying the correct template file. so we can eliminate that from your problem. in addition, in post #4, you have the following code:

Code:
  $products_format_name = $format->fields['format_name'];
  $products_format_url = $format_info->fields['format_url'];
based on the information provided, $products_format_name is correctly populated, and can be used on the template page. your title and OP says you are having difficulty displaying new product field data on product pages. and yet your code suggests that by echoing that var, you can safely use that element, which would say "vinyl". have you tried using that variable on the product info page? is that the correct value for that variable for this product?

your other variable is not being correctly populated as the sql statement you have constructed returns nothing:

Code:
select * from media_format_info where format_id = '4' and languages_id = '1'
so you have incorrectly populated that table or incorrectly constructed the above sql statement.

in addition, the populating of the first table seems to be missing some fields as the date modified and date added have no values.

with regards to not modifying core ZC files, good luck with that! (said sarcastically....) as i have previously stated, i do not think what you are trying to do is easy. and it is not handled easily in other shopping cart systems that provide overrides and field creation and the like.... my opinion previously stated is to put as much as possible in your own extra_functions file and then call needed functions, most likely from the template file to preserve as much of the ZC core as possible. and if you truly want to have an audit trail of what you are doing, i would put all source under a source version control system, ie git, so that you can see what you did. (mind you, learning git is a major job in and/of itself; but well worth the value in the long run...)

with regards to the problem and your question raised in #9 above, frankly i'm at a loss. i do not agree w MCs statement that "..the value returned from your query isn't being handled the way expected." i provided you some tools to see what is available in the database objects you constructed, named $format and $format_info. they provided exactly the information i expected/needed to help you with your problem. if you look closely at the "real mess" object that you provided, perhaps you can better understand what those objects are and now to use them.

best.