Hi Paul,
Glad you find the component useful in your ministry. As for the white space - this is a function of the internal player so it's no wonder you couldn't change the colors.
I'm not sure you can effect the look of the player - that's the bad news - though you could try to do some research.
The good news is that version 6.2 and above we are using JWPlayer which can show videos as well as audio. I've also made it so you can add parameters to the player so you can control other things. In addition, the player won't show up until someone clicks the speaker icon so there won't be any annoying "white" space until the file is actually playing.
The current player (versions 6.1.x and below) is from 1PixelOut
www.1pixelout.net/
You can check there for how to customize.
Tom