Is the information that TuneUp writes to tracks visible to other software or devices (on my home network)?
Yes. TuneUp uses the Apple-published programming interface to write the information back to iTunes and then iTunes writes the information to the files’ ID3 tags (or equivalent). Note, however, that there are various version of ID3 tags (v1, V2.X, etc.) and different ways of saving the information in the tag itself (reverse unicode which affects Korean/Japanese/Chinese/etc.). Sometimes you have to play with the “Convert ID3 tags” feature within (PC) iTunes to get all the tags to be visible on some devices or software.