AJA Kona or Blackmagic Declink for HD playout from Premiere on Windows10?

[FG001]

My previous Mac online workstation had an AJA KONA 3 card for playing out HD material to the client monitor.

I am now building a PC/Win10 Premiere workstation and thinking do I really need a specialised I/O card just for realtime playback? Is playing out through the NVidia GTX HDMI outputs not enough if all I need is 1080p for the moment?

If not then which card plays better in a PC/Windows 10 environment - AJA Kona 4 or Blackmagic Decklink 4K Pro?

[Richard M Knight]

I use a BM Decklink Studio 4K and have no problems with HD, I don't do 4K yet.

I'm on a Win10 i7 PC

[excited_Genie16B8]

do I really need a specialised I/O card just for realtime playback?

The I/O card isn't for real time playback.  It's to get the OS and GPU driver out of the signal chain so you can monitor the signal accurately.

Mercury Transmit will pass the signal from the sequence directly to such hardware, bypassing anything that might alter the signal and thus ensuring a proper viewing environment.

[chrisw44157881]

everything from mercury transmit comes out REC. 709 hard coded. No way around it. Also, blackmagic doesn't support custom resolutions like AJA. something to think about. As for a proper viewing environment. True for interlaced video, but if you're not doing that, then a high end REC. 709 100% calibrated monitor with a spyder is no worse.