Abstract: Systems and methods for serving food, which employ stackable containers. The system includes a first container, a second container, and a support structure having top and bottom tiers for receiving the first and second containers, respectively. The first container features two or more compartments into which food may be placed. The second container also features two or more compartments, and both the second container and its compartments can be complementary in size and shape to the first container and its compartments. The second container further includes a means for heating and a means for cooling so that both hot and cold food items may be simultaneously served during a meal. The distance between the first container and the second container when seated on the support structure is such that food items in the first container can be effectively cooled or heated as desired by the second container.

Abstract: The present invention provides a system and method for storing re-synchronization, error correction and/or error detection data within an existing communication protocol, while still maintaining full compliance to a standard, such as the MPEG-2 AAC standard. By doing so, data information can still be passed from an encoder to a decoder via a channel using an existing and well known standard transport protocol. However, the existing well known transport protocol can now include the data necessary for synchronization of the decoder to the received raw data, along with error detection and error correction by the decoder.