"Linearize Workspace" or "Blend colours using 1.0 gamma"...?

At the moment I'm working on a HD show.  The animation is from Flash, Maya aswell as live action/photographic still BGs.  We're a little way into the production (first pass at first 2 episodes) and are adhereing to the "tech specs" sent to us by the commisioning studio.  Right now we're comping in 16bits with no colour management but it occurred to me (after reading Stu "The DV Rebel" Maschwitz recent musings) that because we're doing such heavy compositing on this show that we should be working in a Linear HD Rec 709 profile and then output to HD Rec 709.  Most likely TIFFs.  Personally I think the 3D composites will perform much better in a "properly linear" colour space rather than just blending colours using 1.0 gamma.
My question is speed related I guess.  Because there's such a quick turnaround on this show I'm conscious of delaying an already fairly complicated comp stage (at least for any TV I've ever done).  Would I be better off just selecting the"Blend colours using 1.0 gamma" option and staying in straight unmanaged 16bit project or going all out and working linear and setting my workspace to HD Rec 709?  Are there any major delays working linear?  Are the longer comp times justifiable with the better quality output?
Of course I don't want to mention this to anyone in the studio because the moment I say "oh yeah linear gives way higher quality results" they're automatically gonna go "well screw the schedule and go linear mah boy!" and won't understand/care about any of the arguments I put to them about adding to our considerable workload.  I'm as enthusiastic about this show as the next guy, and want it to look as good as it possibly can but not at the expense of my teams sanity.
Any comments greatly appreciated.

There is a white paper describing the process here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/aftereffects/articles/color_management_workflow.html.
Though what you are asking for is judgement if it makes sense for you. Things looks different, often prettier, but sometimes it is suprising how adapted you are to the 'wrong' way of mixing colors together. There is a good discussion on the pro's and con's at Stu's blog http://prolost.com/blog/2009/9/30/passing-the-linear-torch.html including a link to a podcast where some people chat about working in linear.
--chris
ae eng mgr

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