Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Christmas in UK

Everywhere is closed on Christmas. So it takes us long time to find a restaurant to eat dinner. It may like the Chinese New Year in Taiwan, pizza hut is closed, Macdonald's is closed, KFC is closed, one SUBWAY is open, most bars are closed. In the end, we came to an Chinese restaurant , Good Friend Chinese Restaurant, 好友記菜館. After got in, by seeing the crowd, you would forget how cold the outside is. Thanks to Rance, his experience help me, a no idea guy, and Tony, an English lived in China, to have a great dinner. They enjoyed the crab, which I am not interested in. But I like the 炒大腸, 麻婆豆腐, 炒青菜, 鐵板什麼肉(?). And the TsingTao beer, Tony said it would be better to be 'QingDao', wulung tea are good. Though it's a little weird for Taiwanese to eat Chinese food in English countries, it's sweet to have that with good friends on Christmas.

I have a question about what should be sold if a man want to open an English restaurant in Taiwan or China. Tony said many people do not know what is English food, because most of English men just cook at home. So maybe a restaurant with an English cook could be an English restaurant. I wonder what food could be taken as a symbol of English food. I have ate potato some times in the meals in England. Potato may be a part of it. However I may make it wrong because the food I can recognized are quite a few.

Tony never deny his love of Chinese culture. The most surprising is he take the first 漢 emperor, 劉邦, as a model to learn. He like Liu and think Liu is a good leader and manager. I think he must ignore the part that Liu had killed his ministers after the emperor built. ( I wonder why it's easier for me to remember something bad someone has done but something good? ) Tony studied five different versions of English translated 孫子兵法 (The art of war), and said that Sun is good at making the action and reaction between people clear. Waaa~ Where is the 孫子兵法 I have read and used in many exams?

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

DVB Recept Considerations at Delivery System Boundaries

A bug was reported from [C] that something wrong with our DVB receipt device. Some duplicated channels appeared, and some EPG missed. Thanks to [C], he helped to point out the possible missed considerations by explain the specifics in his environment. That occurs when the receipt device is in somewhere signal coverage from different DVB transmit stations overlapped. And the stations are not configured as SFN.
Here is an example.
Freeview on the Hannington transmitter
Freeview on the Rowridge transmitter
Freeview on the Salisbury transmitter
The area of Salisbury east is covered by the three transmitters.

As a result, BBC may appear twice or more in a channel list. All of them carry the same program, but from different stations or different frequencies. That is absolutely not what an user would like to see.

Here I have a plan to fix it.
1. select a network
* with a specific network_id
* consider to compare the signal strength as the mechanism to select
** check the get_signal_strength function work
2. scan those frequencies in NIT frequency_list_descriptor
* record service_id in each entry
* consider what to do when frequency_list_descriptor is not available
3. scan PAT, PMT, SDT, EIT on those frequencies found in 2.
* discard data if the network_id, service_id is not match

Reference:
DVB, ETR 211