This work proposes and implements a system to transmit in real-time slow video signals -in particular video conference signal, that is 'head and shoulder' sequences -over the public network. The proposed codec is based on a multiple description approach that gives N equally important and independent flows. The advantage of this codec is an intrinsic robustness to the transmission errors and to the packet loss, as the simulation results have proved. This feature results very suitable not only for IP-network, but also for every packet network like the next generation mobile systems. The approach is important also for the end user scalability since each device can decide the information to receive according to the resolution of the display and the bandwidth of the connecting link using the same source data stream.