A digital electronic device supports program transmission to a recipient device via the Internet. A frame adapter decodes incoming IP program packets and re-encodes resulting program signals adaptively to optimally suit the recipient device based upon configuration data of the recipient device. The frame adapter receives feedback from the recipient device, which may include a characterization of a communication path between the digital electronic device and the recipient device. The frame adapter utilizes the configuration information to generate the optimal video frame stream that is transmitted to the recipient device. The compression itself involves producing optimal number of base and predicted video frames. The adaptive encoder and multiplexer receives digitized program signals either from a local source or from an external program source, transcodes (optionally), encodes and multiplexes them adaptively to optimally suit individual recipient devices, based on configurations of the corresponding recipient devices.