While Learning expands in all directions… including towards the commercial content media world of cable, streaming, and satellite…changes are still afoot in that environment. Changes that may affect delivery of “eLearning” at some point as the media infrastructure continues to develop/ evolve.

An article in Slate, which starts a conversation about “What’s Next for Netflix” touches on a number of hot button issues for content distribution. But what is possibly even more useful in terms of “curated information” are all the personal anecdotes and predictions in the “mostly good” comments that follow the article. (Gary might find these of interest wearing his video distribution hat)

Of course, we are all guinea pigs for these changes, so we all have our story, experiences, and predictions or wishes. Personally, I’ve upgraded my commercial content access from just the Comcast bundle cable package, to a Roku streaming device in addition to previous Apple TV. Added a Blu-Ray player with wifi streaming from Sony too. Have been exploring what choices all this now provides, and trying to take advantage of the recent ISP speed boost from Docsis3.0 by Comcast locally.

IMO it seems like the big vertical conglomerates like Comcast, which now also owns NBC/ Universal, and has the option of capping internet access usage for services not affiliated with them…as well as the option of denying and removing access to content for competitors such as Netflix, and Amazon Prime…has the upper hand.

One of the reasons I added Roku etc, was I was noticing how ever more limited Netflix streaming was becoming for the kind of films I like to watch. Remains to be seen, pun intended, if the video world, with YouTube, and streaming, will open the video market…like the music market was opened and prices reduced… or if it will be a matter of vertically integrated media behemoths maintaining and strengthening access and cost control.

As this rant started out wondering about: whatever is the answer to the above question will also affect eLearning access and cost. Why?….because at a certain level, it’s all code and packets and protocols zipping around the planet at the speed of light. Or close. =^)