We come together today to mourn the loss of a heroic friend. To share the grief we all feel and, perhaps in that sharing, to find the strength to bare our sorrow and the courage to look for the seeds of hope.

It is with heavy hearts, a great sense of loss, and a sickening wave of Blu-ray-tinged nausea that we have to commit the HD DVD format to the power-efficient world of stand-by in the sky.

Born in the eye of Toshiba, the format was in many ways the best HD optical disc format on the market. But so let down it was by its software counterparts that it was unable to achieve a level of sustainable profitability. And thus here we are today, grieving for a friend who has died long before its years.

There is not a lot of solace we can take in these dark times. We’re chewed up with grief. And our thoughts go out to the Toshiba engineers who wasted so much time building the standard, their families and their friends, their pets, their friends’ pets and their neighbours and their pets too. Our thoughts are with them all.

Despite the heights of bright, epic brilliance that HD DVD delivered to our LCD and plasma screens, its long fight against Blu-ray was perhaps always destined to take its deadly toll.

No one can explain why the industry turned on HD DVD in the way it did. And if it were really the case after all that something beyond our comprehension made sense of all the chaos and the cruelty, then that would still be of no consolation at all. Because it is, after all, beyond our comprehension.

But as I look to the future, there is one remaining thought that offers minimal amounts of comfort and solace. A glistening sparkle of hope on the horizon… One ray of consolation that sits above the dark events of the last 24 hours.

Thank GOD I got a Blu-ray player and not an HD DVD one.