not to be a prick (or too much of one)... but what value does it really get you to do this? b&w to color I can see a little, but I don't really need the color to get what's going on.

Did you watch the video? They outline their reasons for doing so pretty well.

Their goal is to compress the time. Colour makes the people in the photos seem more human and less like a historical artefact.

I don't think colourising the photos replaces the b&w shots, but it's an interesting different perspective.

Colorizing things is also a way tyo add to the historical moment of the photograph. Like the 7-up logo - what colours they used. Also, what dyes they used in materials, what colour people's eyes were, what colours were used in every day objects and so on.
It's another dimension to the photo and recording of that history.

We all love the dated look of old photos, but lets be honest - they didn't choose to loose that documented information on purpose, it was a limitation of the medium. Old photographs are not just art pieces. They documented pieces of history with missing information, why not update the information and tell a bigger story of the instant the photo was taken?