Right now, I think it would be near impossible for a new entrant in physical product (DVDs) to go into the marketplace and do well. Bricks and mortar stores already have way more product than they can handle, and generally aren't interested in new studios. Same with distributors, and to a lesser extent, online retailers.

Even many relatively established studios are being foolish and increasing the number of releases, choosing to churn out crap and sell 300 copies instead of focusing on producing and marketing a quality product and sell more copies, and that's making matters even worse.

And, of course, with a website, if you have a crappy tour, you just redo it and put the new one up, and you're done... but if you have a bad DVD cover or the authoring sucks... you probably have a garage full of that title, and it's at best a pain in the ass and at worst extremely expensive to change it out... and you don't have the luxury of cheap testing on traffic, you have to put it out and just hope it sells.

Likewise, marketing DVDs is totally different than marketing websites... it's a one-time sale, highly impulse-based, and the ways of marketing it are limited.

On the other hand, as we've seen, DVD studios have a terrible time with developing online properties... don't know how to market them, don't understand affiliate programs, often have lousy tours, and don't focus enough on retention.

I do think it might be a little easier to take a DVD brand and successfully market it online as a website than it would be to take a website brand and market it as DVDs. Both require an understanding of the marketplace, and neither is easy to pick up if you've focused on the other. At least that's our experience.