To my surprise they had it listed up to 1080p. I thought it must surely be a horrible upscale because it's dubbed only with only 51 episodes. But the quality is really good, and when I compared it to the Japanese Blurays it was basically identical. Definitely way above DVD quality.
The weird thing is it seems to be some kind of custom edition. They've taken the Blurays and re-edited them to fit the English audio. So the first two episodes are chopped back down to one episode. The intro sequence has been rebuilt in English from the clean Bluray opening. The rest of the onscreen Japanese text is still there, but the title cards are a graphic mix of English and Japanese. I've never seen a version do that before.
click for spoiler
Amusingly, they've gone with the old English title card format for episode 1, but using dual languages. The Japanese version didn't have a silhouette title card for episode 1, they just had it floating over the city:
click for spoiler
So the problem with a dual language silhouette title card is there never was a Japanese silhouette version to translate. AnimeLab's version ends up with this:
click for spoiler
That doesn't say The Birth of Astroboy. It says Atom vs Atlas. They used the one from episode 2.
The content edits seem to match the Manga DVDs. Small scenes edited for TV like Tornado's death have been left in, but long scenes like Cleopatra's death which lack English voice acting have been deleted. The episode trailers are present.
This looks like a great version for anyone wanting to watch it in English in HD and doesn't want to spend hundreds on the Blurays. Premium membership is AU$7/month, I think free access is limited to 480p content. Not sure if you have to be in Australia to stream it.
