As part of my ongoing car computer project, I bought a CrystalFontz 634 serial display. It's 20 x 4 characters, with a very bright, even LED backlight (that's controllable in software), DB9 serial connector on the back, and support for driving the display via a data line on a parallel port.

I've been extraordinarily impressed with both the quality of the technical documentation provided with the display, and the display itself. CrystalFontz also provides a discussion forum, which is great for collaborating with other people using the products, and obtaining technical support. Frankly, I've never really been happy with the level of assistance provided by any tech support group, but CrystalFontz is different. Check out this post and this one for examples.

Any company that's willing to respond to a customer question by trying out different solutions, taking pictures with a digital camera, looking up part #'s at external vendor sites, drawing custom wiring diagrams, then posting the results has my money any day... (bear in mind that they do this all for free).

This is a bit of a shameless plug, but these people have been a joy to work with so far, and are highly recommended.

http://www.flat-panel.com/serial_lcd_terminal.htm has an interesting serial LCD terminal that they're selling for about $100: