There was a direct comparison video with a massive matrix that someone made when the first EtD's were being cooped. The EtD was much smoother. Not sure if that was a limitation of the pic in the dongle or if it was something else causing it and has since been fixed.
To add to Steven's great points. Personally I would go EtD and conductor since the setup is pretty easy to configure (at least to me) and once you get past the 4096 limitation of the usb dongle (which can happen pretty quickly with smart strings) you will have to have multiple usb dongles which is just extra wiring/equipment to configure and keep track of. (which com port is which etc) One drawback of the EtD is that your computer network may be very laggy while a show is playing, but that can be easily overcome with either a secondary network (yes more equipment again), switching to a conductor/slave setup which doesn't send massive amounts of broadcast data across your router/switches, or just plugging the EtD directly into the computer (assuming it is supported by your computers network port or you may add a network card, I guess this should be checked also for your switch/router if you have one of those in line like the previous examples). Curiously, my router will broadcast the data, but not allow control of the conductor. It connects, but you can't play the shows or sync time for some reason. So I have just been plugging in directly and using the wireless connection to move files etc on that machine. Worked great so far... I have one computer that would not work when directly connected (home built computer) and a dell that works flawlessly.
My neighbors have actually been mostly positive about the pixels. I switched last year to 100 percent rgb and don't see myself ever going back. The near limitless possibilities of the pixels is just amazing once you get used to working with the large channel counts. (Thank you LSP!) And most people (around here anyway) have never seen the pixels used in a Christmas display so they think I'm a freaking genius.
I did stay at a holiday inn once I guess. I point them all this way actually!
