Which FPGA development kit to use?

Hi everybody! I ask to you in the name of Video Group (Computatinal Math. Dept.,
Moscow State University). We are working in the area of video processing (most of
our algorithgms are available for free in a form of filters for VirtualDub, you
can find them here http://compression.ru/video/). We plan to implement some of
our algorithms in hardware (FPGA). This direction is new for us and so we are
very appriciate for any help in choosing the right FPGA developing kit, which
will emulate FPGA and help in writing and debugging VHDL or verilaog code for
the algorithms. Could you please advice some platforms your company used for
decision of similar problem or may be you can refer us to any trustworthy
project in the area of hardware implementation of video processing algorithms.
Anyway, we would be very pleased for you help!
Thank you! We are happy to invite you to use our filters (http://compression.ru/video/)!