Blue Vision vs. HID

[DJKOR]

That is pretty good. Do you mind tellin me where you picked up the kit from?

Post above edited slightly to include more detail on wear.

The kit I got is from a seller by the name "SUNSTAR-HID". At the moment, the only kits they have for the 35W H11 design are the slimline ballast kits which cost a little more.

Basically though, when it comes to eBay kits, most of them are pretty much the same. As I edited in my post above:

The technology involved with HID's is a little bit advanced so it takes a fair level of quality in the first place for it to work properly. If it works in the first place, you already have a set of decent quality.

In other words, if the kit wasn't up to a good standard, either your bulbs will not ignite, or they will burn out really fast. The thing most people don't realise here is what is involved in HID lighting technology. First you have the lamp which involves a specific gas held under pressure inside the bulb with electrodes on either end that are spaced apart at the right distance, then you have a ballast to drive it which needs to run as per specification to do the job right. There isn't too much room to get either of these things wrong, and if you did, it's going to result in a kit that wears out really really fast.

For those with a more technical mind and want to read up about the HID ballast, here is something for you to read:

Analysis and Design of High-Intensity-Discharge Lamp Ballast for Automotive Headlamp (Thesis - Yongxuan Hu.pdf)

If you chose not to read it, here is once section in there related to what I have mentioned above. Remembering that this was written in 2001 so it may have things stated a little differently (ie. HID's only in luxury cars etc), but the way they work today is still the same:

1.2 Automotive HID Lamp Advantages and Challenges

Recently, there has been an emerging demand to replace the conventional halogen headlamps with the newly introduced small-wattage metal halide HID lamps [4][5]. Compared to the conventional halogen headlamps, these HID lamps offer 5 times better lumen efficacy (as shown in Figs. 1.1 and 1.2), better color rendering (as shown in Fig. 1.1), better focusing capability, and longer life (5000 hours vs. 1500 hours). These superior performances soon make them popular in some high-end cars.

However, this special lamp has its special issues and present some challenges in both converter design and ballast control. These lamps need a very complex ballast circuitry to deal with the special transient characteristics and an efficient DC/DC converter because of the expensive thermal management. This is why these automotive HID headlamps are only optional to luxury cars right now.

Initially, it needs a high voltage pulse for ignition (for Philips D2S 35 W lamp, 2 kV for cold start and 25 kV for hot re-strike). And then a large take-over current should be supplied to the lamp in order to make the lamp transit from the glow discharge state to the arc discharge state. Once the lamp enters into arc discharge state, each electrode needs a relatively long period current to warm up and maintain the arc. Then the ballast need to provide enough power, which is much more than steady state power, to ensure fast transition to steady state to meet the safety requirements. Finally, in steady state, power should be properly controlled constant power preferred) due to the lamp characteristics variations with manufacturing and aging.

[Ascendant Rice]

DJ; i personally wouldnt buy a set of HIDs for $75 shipped. You get what you pay for IMO anyway

I got a $48 hid kit and it works strong has a nice out put and no problems. With modern technology cheap doesnt always mean inferior.