Attached Link: http://www.studiolighting.net/

The link has tutorials with illustrated setups. Some might be helpful. Being a newbie with studio lighting, I really did not know which way to go. Eventually it came to strobes and believe me I felt like the stobe were from Venus and I was from Mars untill I first tired using the lights. Sure, I have not used the lights much but can tell you the set-up is not really difficult. As I said, you do need good metering and a flash meter(incident/reflective flash meter) with sync to fire the lights is needed. You can hold the flash at the subject location, fire the strobe from the meter and get your reading for left, right, straight on. The link has some useful tuts. As for which to choose, hot or strobe..who knows but you. Good luck. If you get into this faster than I have it might be me coming your way for advice. : )