best bulbs & digital ballasts?

i tried going through several pages of this forum to see if this question had already been asked to no avail, so i'll just start a new thread and ask it myself.

i have a 4 1/2' X 4 1/2' walk in closet that i'm going to use about 2 1/2 feet of depth in because the door swings inward.

i'm going to be growing everything SCROG style so light penetration won't be an issue. i'm going to put the plants on half a dozen SCROG tables so i can rotate the plants daily as a sort of DIY light mover.

to start with, i'm going to go with a 400w halide and then when i get to flowering, plan on adding a 250-300w HPS that i'll run 12/24 and cut the halide back to 10/24 to simulate late season sunsets. as i've heard that UV is good for THC and infrared is bad for it, i'm not too keen on HPS bulbs.

i've also gathered that many bulbs are bad for use in digital ballasts. i'd never considered on before as they don't have the best reliability ratings, but after seeing a 1000w unit in dead silent operation and knowing they're also much more efficient to boot, i decided i'm going to give them a try.

does anyone have any good shootout links to read or personal experience with bulbs or ballasts that are either good or bad?

i'd like to get the best available if possible. i REALLY wanted to go the ceramic metal halide route, but a couple years later, you STILL can't find anyone who actually sells 400w horizontals which are theoretically in production.

any help in my quest would be greatly appreciated.

 

i'll make a note of that and forgive me everyone else for not putting this in "grow room setup" these categories are different than the ones i learned elsewhere.

i'm not 100% keen on digital ballasts, but digital switching DOES kick all kinds of hiney in audio amplifiers (class D) but visiting a store with dead silent 1000w digitals has made me convert. my new neighbors in my grow apt. are nearly as bad as my nosy fugging landlord in my last apt. so i'd rather maintain the lowest of profiles and gamble on reliability and efficiency.

i wonder too if that's one of the bulbs that's not recommended for digital.

some bulbs don't like digital ballasts because of their startup times. that's why i'm looking for bulbs that like digital.

keep the info flowing grasscity... we can work through this.