You wrote:
So, no, I don’t think you will be that happy with a new Macbook Pro. They’re limited to 4 cores at 2.8 ghz each. A Mac pro with 6 cores will get you to 3.5 ghz each, which is a huge difference. A laptop will be a compromise. Also, when you really load them, the fans start to get pretty loud.
The new Mac Pro’s have a lot to offer, especially the boot drive which is twice as fast as the SSD’s on the latest laptops, and 5 times faster than the older towers, because it is 6g running directly on the PCIe bus, not the SATA bus. We are seeing over 900 mb/s read/write on these, my new Macbook Pro with SSD only gets about 450 mb/s.
If you can afford a new 6 or 8 core Mac Pro I would go for it.
You don’t really need the Intensity card, just connect your TV to the HDMI port on the Mac Pro and put your video on that screen.