the client has ample computational resources and a high resolution display, there is no way to get a better viewing experience which is commensurate with the available resources. This phenomenon is known as the "cliff effect"-no video is available unless some threshold constraints are met and no improvement is achieved when the constraints are exceeded. Scalable video coding (SVC) [18] encodes video into ordered layers, where each higher layer provides a refinement to the encoding of the lower layers. Since decoding of lower layers is a prerequisite for the decoding of higher ones, the lower layers need a higher level of protection in transmission. In broadcast applications, each layer may be transmitted as a separate stream, with different protection levels, e.g., by using hierarchical modulation [9]. In point-to-point applications, feedback from the client usually indicates how many layers are to be transmitted. In these situations, providing different protection to each layer is usually difficult-all layers receive the same protection, which severely limits the scalability. The practical limitation of SVC is its relatively small number of layers (due to