To be able to transmit television pictures in a digital form through a medium having a limited bandwidth, the pictures are subjected to picture transform and to variable-length coding. The picture to be transmitted is converted in this manner into a bit stream comprising code words of variable length. This bit stream is converted into a channel bit stream which is less sensitive to transmission errors. To this end the most significant code words (representing the average luminance and the coarse picture details) of sub-pictures of 8*8 pixels are accommodated at fixed bit positions of the channel bit stream. These code words can be retrieved by simple count-down of the bit positions. The other code words are distributed over the other bit positions. The decoder is relatively simple because the length of each block comprising significant code words is also transmitted. This length is preferably adapted to the extent of picture detail in the sub-picture.