Anti-glare Super Twisted Nematic High Quality Passive (TI-STN)

or

Anti-glare Thin Film Transistor Active Matrix (TFT)

I've never even heard of the first one. These are for LCD displays for an incar thingy I'm thinking of.

If I remember correctly, active matrix will be brighter, so that might be better for in-car.

So the key words are active and passive? That would make sense I suppose.

Sounds like a laptop monitor comparison then. (Almost) all are "active" now. 10x better in daylight too.

Active displays have a little transistor built into the display for each pixel. This means the thing is definately on or off. A passive display doesn't have this so you end up with nearby pixels turning on partially. This gives you a really smeary screen and if you've ever seen old LCDs the window lines problem. The edges of a window continue the full length of the display and have a funny ghost image look.

The response time for an active display is much better than a passive display as well.

Active is normally brighter because it just has a better backlight. If you had exactly the same backlight in a passive panel and an active panel then the active one will be dimmer. The active one was more circuitry and bits because of the transistors embedded in the panel and therefore blocks more light and requires a brighter backlight.

Thats great. Thanks for the info!