In a transmission system comprising a transmitter (4) coupled via a transmission channel (10) to a receiver (6). The transmitter (4) comprises a channel encoder (14) for deriving encoded symbols from source symbols. The receiver (6) comprises a channel decoder (28) for reconstructing the source symbols from the signal received from the transmission channel (10). According to the present invention, the transmitter (4) comprises a separate encoder for coding and transmitting a coding property used in the channel encoder (14) to the receiver (6). The receiver (6) is arranged for receiving the encoded coding property from the transmission medium, and the separate channel decoder (26) is arranged for decoding the encoded coding property. The coding property provided by the separate channel decoder (26) is passed to setting means (27) in the channel decoder (28) for setting the coding property of the channel decoder (28).