NHK Plans 50-Year Digital Archive

Tetsujin28 writes: "The Japan Times Online reports that NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corp.) is planning a digital video archive for all film and video footage from the company's 50 years in broadcasting. Construction of a new building to house the archive is to begin in January 2001, with completion expected in 2003."

"Programs from the archive will be accessible via personal computers in NHK's Tokyo broadcasting center, which will be linked to the archive via fiber optic lines. An NHK official also said that the company plans to make the archive accessible to outside users some time in the future. So, anyone have a list of good old-school anime this archive will contain?"

This is truly an ambitious project -- I wonder how many terabytes it will take to digitize that many years worth of film and TV. On the other hand, it seems to be inevitable, so it's only sensible to start now -- storage techniques and prices are sure to improve over the course of the project. I just hope they make the films available under reasonable terms. Note, this article was first posted to tetsujin.org, which is worth checking out for you Japanophiles.