We always seem to hear on the news about the newest innovations with a product like the iPod, and subsequently how much Apple’s stock is soaring. However, following is a cautionary tale about the downsides of innovating, takin’ it to tha’ streets, and crumbling dismally.

Word is that the cost to Toshiba of losing the High Def Disc format war is going to cost them 100 billion yen (US$986 million) for last year alone! That’s ahellavalotta Big Macs (at least 260 million-ish, just in case you were wondering)!

Despite this, Tosh will still be booking a small net profit for the year, mostly on the back of other products it manufactures like microchips and NAND flash memory.

So it’s the time when all high definition TV owners with a regular DVD collection have been waiting for. You can finally put to rest your fears of buying into an obsolete format (a big shout out to any owners of consumer Betamax, Mini Disc, pre-recorded DAT tapes, etc.) and jump in to the HD disc foray now that Blu Ray has been declared the winner of the recent format wars (There are plenty of articles out there if you wanted to pass by slowly and read up on the HD-DVD demise like the latest motorway accident…this ain’t one).

That’s all well and good, especially for Sony and the otherss in the Blu Ray camp, but what now for Toshiba, the guys behind the soon-to-be defunct HD DVD format? Once they’ve finished shutting down their manufacturing plants and flogging off their discontinued stock on unsuspecting consumers, they’ve been invited to jump on the (already quite packed) Blu Ray bandwagon. Frank Simonis, from the Blu-Ray Disc Association, had this to say: “Of course we have always said that Toshiba and Microsoft, and any other company, is more than welcome to join the Blu-ray Disc Association. We are an open organisation, with an open disc standard. If Toshiba decides to drop HD DVD we would extend the hand of friendship to them, they are always welcome to join.”

With an indication that Tosh might have lost a fair bit of cash battling through this format war, they might not be making the transition to Blu-Ray right away.

More info from techradar