During the transition from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4, it will not be possible, due to bandwidth constraints, to broadcast all channels in both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 format. However, the switched digital video (SDV) system can be used to manage the transition from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 and to minimize the bandwidth needed by the system until the transition completes. The switched digital video system delivers streams with an encoding type based on the decoding capabilities of the settop boxes tuned to that channel. The SDV system may need to force tune settop boxes or use transcoding to handle transitions between different encoding types.