Amn3sia:
i was looking around at digikey and the max7219 seems a bit expensive for my little project, but i found this: TLC5916.
It's is a fair bit cheaper and seems to do what i want. am i missing something though?
Yes, you sure are!
eBay.
The illustration in reply #4 is a link!
The TLC5916 does only half of the job. The MAX7219 does it all. 
(No, actually the TLC5916 does only one quarter of the job. 
)