The channel, which went live on March 26, is offered through the Actvila VoD service, which offers TV viewers movie contents through a broadband internet connection and a set top box.
April titles include Toei's Battle Royale, Shochiku's Casshern and Nikkatsu classic The Eagle And The Hawk. May titles will focus on monster movies such as Gamera. All films are available in both standard (3Mbps) and high definition (6Mbps) quality at a cost of $4.28 (Y420) and $6.40 (Y630) per movie.
Each month six new titles will be offered, ranging from classic to contemporary from all genres. The combined libraries of the five majors are estimated to exceed 12,000 films.
Such joint supply of content from Japan's five largest film studios marks an industry first.
Actvila launched in September 2007 with co-investment from Sharp, Toshiba, Panasonic and Hitachi. Japan's largest video store chain Tsutaya launched Tsutaya TV through Actvila in February
With some of the world's oldest movie companies, the Japanese market has recently seen increased exploitation of vast libraries through VoD, specialty cable channels and theatrical retrospectives.
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