Each week Adam Frucci takes a closer look at the latest gadget buzz in his column, Shift.

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Dearly beloved,

We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of our friends the CD, the DVD, the HD DVD, the Blu-ray Disc, and every other physical media format. For many years they stood by us and provided us with handy ways for us to consume our favorite media, but their time has come and gone. In order for us to get some closure I've gathered us here to talk about our fondest memories and to recount those last harrowing years as our friends desperately clung to life. They were fighters, weren't they? Right to the very end. But here we are, coming up to the end of 2010, and look at how things have changed. President Obama has cured both AIDS and cancer personally, there's a colony on the moon, and all music, video, and photography is enjoyed exclusively in digital form.

Remember when the first records were pressed? Ah, those were the days. People were so excited about being able to keep performances in a physical form! Before that you had to actually go see a band perform or listen to the radio to hear music. As time went on, our friends the media formats grew and changed, but they never imagined that they would be replaced. "We'll just get smaller," they would say, "or maybe increase our capacities. I can't imagine anything else happening." So naïve.

But then around the end of the 20th century things started changing. Songs, photos, and videos were converted to digital form, where they could be passed around without the need of any bulky physical formats. When Napster came out, it was the beginning of the end for CDs, with people immediately embracing the convenience of downloading songs to their computers, but DVDs still felt safe. How could the same thing happen to them? They held movies, things that were way too big and special to get converted.

Oh, how they were wrong. It wasn't movies but TV shows that started the trend of disembodied video. While people used to record shows they didn't want to miss to a trusty VHS tape (something we mourned the loss of quite some time ago), the advent of DVRs like TiVo changed all that. People got used to the convenience of not needing to rewind, not needing to sort through piles of tapes, and not needing to pay for blank media. It was just so much easier.

At that point you would think that DVD would have seen the writing on the wall. But no, so arrogant was the once-popular movie format that Blu-ray and HD DVD were created to "upgrade" it. These fledgling formats were created with the mindset that nothing would come and replace physical media formats even as said formats were laying down on their deathbeds. They never even had a chance. Even if they hadn't waged an anti-consumer format war, sooner or later the HD disc would have gone the way of the rest of the formats. The war just sped up the process.

So what did in for the movie formats, the last holdouts? Well, the Netflix set-top box really nailed them, for one. Once Internet connections got fast enough to handle the huge size of HD movie files (and to think DVDs were once considered big), people realized that they didn't need to worry about driving somewhere to rent a movie or even going to the mailbox. They didn't need to do anything really, except hit a few buttons. And again they saved space by getting rid of the clutter that comes when you need to have a physical object for every piece of media that you want to keep.

You had a good run, physical media, and we'll miss you. There was something so comforting about having something to hold in your hands to represent that album or movie you loved so much, but progress has no need for sentimentality. So we lay you down to rest and hope that you went peacefully, happy in knowing that you did your jobs to the best of your ability. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Now hey, if anyone wants the new Radiohead record I can shoot it over to you if you have the new wireless iPod firmware patch. Anyone? — A.F.