Ian - unfortunately text is one of the most demanding of things to get right.
It depends on what you are showing your text on, too. To make really silky smooth text then you really need to run content at 50 or 60 fps.

After Effects really is the business for this.

http://vimeo.com/15247757
This is an installation I programmed, with James Cooksey doing the LED.
This was played back using Animation Codec at 800x600@50fps to get the text as smooth as the tickers in Canary Wharf. The font was a special dot matrix font, with no aliasing. The content was pixel perfect. Played back off a Kitten (a baby Cat).

Hugh