Remember a while back when we announced that Dargaud had upscaled the episodes into HD? Well that English HD version has finally surfaced on Amazon's US streaming service! You can watch it for free if you have Amazon Prime, but you can't watch it at all if you don't have Prime. It's not even available for purchase. There's always the option to get a 30-day free trial of Prime if you really want to watch it but you don't want to pay for a Prime membership.

But for those of you who don't want to give any money to Amazon or its sleazebag CEO, allow me to try and ease your fear of missing out.

Code Lyoko was originally made in Standard Definition and not widescreen. When companies upscale old TV series into HD, rather than preserving the SD format, they sometimes choose to change the episodes to widescreen format because it's the format most media is in nowadays. They can either expand the shot lengthways, often giving us a view of things like filming equipment that really shouldn't be on screen; or they can crop the shot and sacrifice the top and bottom bits, often cropping out certain details. And Code Lyoko...is cropped.

As you can see, the screenshot from the Amazon Prime version of the episode is pretty crisp in quality despite being a larger image and it doesn't have black bars on the edges, but the top and bottom is cropped out so that it fits widescreen format. While it's nice to see the episodes in better quality, the cropping means that certain details will be missing from the episodes.

The other versions also look slightly stretched vertically in comparison to the HD episode. Of course, this is just a single screenshot from one episode and you'd really need to see more episodes to make a better comparison.

(Note: The episodes on YouTube, both French and English, occasionally suffer from muted colours like you see in the French version here. Most of the episodes are fine but sometimes you'll see these muted colours, especially in season 1.)

Still undeterred? Then go forth and watch Code Lyoko in good quality!