English Miku & Kaito Demo at NYCC

 Posted by at 2:37 pm  Hatsune Miku, Other Vocaloids  No Responses »
Oct 232011
 

Those of you who were fortunate enough to attend the Vocaloid Conference panel at the New York Comic Con last weekend were shown a real treat. Not only was an early test of Miku’s English voice banks shown, but Kaito as well! The news on development was confirmed back at the Anime Expo 2011 Vocaloid Conference on July 2nd, but it was too early to have any sort of demo available at the time.

For those who didn’t attend the conference at Anime Expo 2011, here’s a quick rundown of what happened. During the conference, Crypton Future Media’s producer of Hatsune Miku, Wataru Sasaki, also known as the “father” of Miku, asked the audience if we were interested in seeing the release of an English Miku. Almost none of us raised our hands, but you honestly can’t blame us. We were simply being cautiously skeptical until we saw any real demos to make a decision.

Well, us as fans can rest assured. This demo not only shows her sounding just as cute as her Japanese voice banks, but actual distinguishable English words! Please read the full story, as this post is a bit large. Continue reading »

The 2011 Recap

 Posted by at 10:07 pm  Concerts, Hatsune Miku, Merchandise, Other, Videogames  6 Responses »
Oct 212011
 

With the site a bit behind the times on most Vocaloid events, I think a recap of all major events for 2011 thus far is in order.

With everything from amazing public events to devastating natural disasters, 2011 has shaped up to be a big year for Vocaloid fans everywhere. So with that, enjoy a dose of Miku flavored deliciousness.  Read the full story! Continue reading »

A new challenger enters the fray!

 Posted by at 1:35 pm  Site News, Uncategorized  3 Responses »
Oct 212011
 

Well, something like that. To keep things short and sweet, I’ll just quickly introduce myself.

I simply go by the name of jrharbort (no, not Junior) and I’ve been a very happy member of the Vocaloid community for almost 4 years now.

Thanks to rather unusual and funny circumstances, I have been invited by Erik to be a contributor to this site. The details of which can be read in the comments of the previous post.  A surprising twist indeed, but a happy one.

Starting today, I’ll be taking on the responsibility of  a news writer for the site. Thank you very much to the people of Mikufan for the opportunity, and I hope everyone else watching will enjoy what I have to contribute.

Just don’t touch the leeks, and we should all get along just fine. =P

Happy Disappearance Day!

 Posted by at 10:56 pm  Classic, Hatsune Miku, MMD  5 Responses »
Oct 162011
 

Today, four years ago (October 17th, 2007) marked an important day in the history of Hatsune Miku. Just barely two weeks after her initial release, the popularity on the Japanese internet had raised to such insane levels, that Google and Yahoo Japan started blocking results for the keywords “Hatsune Miku” – because they were falsely identified as spam due to the sheer amount of traffic generated.

The outcry and sadness about the “disappearance of Hatsune Miku” have been so loud that just a few hours later Google and Yahoo officially apologized and lifted the block on the search results.

Happiness was restored and a legendary song was born.

If you have been living under a rock for the past four years, I hope you enjoyed today’s history lesson.

via jrharbort on YouTube

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra6_6gOGK6E]

Improving NicoVideo viewing experience and buffering speed

 Posted by at 10:39 pm  Hatsune Miku, Other, Site News  1 Response »
Oct 162011
 

As many of you know, the number one source for the latest Hatsune Miku songs and videos always has been and always will be NicoNicoVideo.

Improving buffering speeds with a Japanese VPN

With the recent changes on the latest version of nicovideo.jp many users might have noticed that response speeds and buffering times seem to have highly increased.

The reason for this is that the videos are now partly buffered/stores on a different server than before. This server has a much worse route (read: connection) with some of the American Tier-3 providers. This means that no matter of your internet connection, the video will load much, much slower than you might be used to from before.

This problem can be bypassed currently by using a Japanese Proxy, or better a Japanese VPN. Most VPNs are commercial services, but are available over at vpntraffic for as low as $10 for three months. Using a Japanese VPN will make it almost as if you were actually browsing websites from Japan. Your IP will be Japanese and all websites will see you as if you were browsing from Japan directly. Of course the data is still being routed back to wherever you are, but the routing paths with a proxy or VPN are much better than the current default Nicovideo servers.

In our testing the buffering speeds on a popular video at primetime have gone up from 40kB/s to up to 1300kB/s.

Using a download tool

For those with more patience, who do not mind watching a video with delays, there is always the option to download a video directly instead of attempting to watch it while buffering. You can use the popular Firefox extension NicoFox to download any video or song from NicoNico to your computer. With NicoFox, you can download videos first and then watch them without interruption from your computer. NicoFox even saves the comments for each video, so you are not missing out on that either.

Summary

  • Improve buffering speed directly with a Japanese VPN
  • Use NicoFox to permanently store videos on your computer

We hope that these steps help you to enjoy viewing Nico videos without much interruption again. If you know of any other ways to get around the current problems, let us know in the comments below!

 Older Entries  Newer Entries