I'd only go Mac, with a Cubix expansion chassis. If money were no object, I'd make the entire facility Linux as far as color-correction goes, and go for 8 GPUs. Real-world, you can do HD with no problem with a high-end Mac and fast storage.
I again question the need to have two. Every major facility I've seen in LA generally has one 50" display at the front of the room, and the clients sit behind the colorist and just peer over his or her head. That unless it's a grading theater, in which case it's a projection screen where the client sits in front and the colorist sits in back of the room and looks over the client's head. But two monitors is fraught with problems. I know it's done at some facilities, but I think it's inviting trouble.
I'm not an expert in this field but from looking at what the different players are doing I think there is not many that can stand up against BM / Resolve for grading. They got all the schools hooked, they got all the BM camera users hooked and they have enough other sales to keep doing what they do. In other words they can have people on staff that develop Resolve further without really charging for it. They figured out early on that it would be a winner if they just dumped out resolve licenses for less / free and have people downloading it for free just to realize that they want a graphics card, a console and all kinds of video converters and everything thing else that goes with the trade. So no charge for software and then provide hardware to the people that gets hooked is a tactic has worked very well for them and I very much think it's the future of software development. Giving away the main part and then the client comes back to buy other bits and peaces that they needed to improve.
The solutions that other still try to fly, where you kind of need to buy a whole setup does not attract schools or first time users in the same way and when people already learned one software, then it takes quite a lot to make them jump ship and go spend a lot of money to start all over on something else.
So for me, if I was to set up a grading/finishing facility today I would for sure go for resolve. No doubt there is systems out there that might preform better, but if I try to look a few years down the line then I really do not see a bright future for mystica, filmtools etc. To me it's quite clear that the times for big machines and heavy investments in this field are long gone, that mentality maybe worked well back in the days of filmscanners and tape decks but not now. Today I think it's far better to not lock down such sums on dedicated hardware that no matter what will be quite outdated rather shortly.
I see the new mac pro's with fast SAN/fiber or Thunderbolt networking and possibilities to set up good render farms for grading and also have multiple people working over fast network. Just as for VFX, one balance out the material, one work on the look, one provides mattes/splines, etc. As when the price for machinery goes down the only way to up the game is manpower. Sadly the wester world and our salaries are not really optimized to win the jobs when those times comes. But thats another story
My preference is for D65 lighting in the room at a very low level, if this is TV/home video grading on a monitor. Tracklights with very narrow focus and no splash can illuminate small pockets of lights on tables, plus small striplights for floor steps at the client table. Clients generally need aimable Littlelights or something like that so they can check their notes, get on their laptops, smartphones, whatever. I've gone back and forth with monitor wall backlighting and can work either way; if I can choose, I'd rather have it than not, provided it's at maybe 20% of the illumination of the monitor.
There are plenty of free solutions on Win for doing that.
