HDLink or Intensity

Hi,

I am about to set up a system at home where I can edit and color grade my projects. I am using a MacBook Pro, I'll have a consumer LCD TV, and I need to monitor on that TV from Avid, AfterEffects and DaVinci Resolve. I know I need some kind of box to send the right signals to the TV, but I am not sure whether I need the Intensity Shuttle (or Intensity Extreme) or the HDLink Pro 3D DisplayPort.

I am mostly editing 1080p/25 footage (though I have projects coming up shooting on the Alexa so I might have to deal with 2k or 4k footage as well).

I want to calibrate the TV screen and make sure that what I see on that screen is as close to an exact representation of my footage as possible. I also obviously want real time playback.

Apart from the Intensity's capturing abilities (which I won't really need), what exactly is the difference in what these boxes do? It seems the HDLink is better for color grading, am I right?

I should add that I am a student on a limited budget, so I want the cheapest (and best) alternative possible.

limited budget..

You should also check out the Ultrastudio Mini Monitor, which is the cheapest solution for monitoring only.

As you mentoned calibration, that is the key function HDLink can provide, but Intensity or Mini Monitor cannot.
User can load LUTs (LookUptables) to HDLink through USB and thus adjust the output to match your calibration targets.

Ok, yes. But I have seen it mentioned that LUTs can be applied directly from Resolve, is this not correct? And how different would that be? I'm not completely getting why the LUTs have to be applied through a box. I'm quite new to this whole thing..

You sort of indicated the need of external LUT control by listing different softwares in your initial posting.
If you can store display specific LUT into hardware device in the output path, then different software outputs are closer to truth with their default settings.

Ok, makes sense. How would I connect my MacBook Pro to the HDLink though? It seems to me that it needs an SDI feed. Wouldn't that mean I need some other kind of device to convert the signal, and in that case which device would that be? There are so many different boxes.. Finding it hard to understand exactly which one is needed for what purpose.