A premises based multimedia communication system includes a source device that produces multimedia content, a rendering device that presents the multimedia content, and a premises communication network coupling the source device to the rendering device. The system determines a bit error rate of the premises communication network, transfers the multimedia content from the source device to the rendering device, and when the bit error rate exceeds a bit error rate threshold, the system at least partially disables link layer encryption of video frames of the multimedia content transfer. With the link layer operations at least partially disabled, the system can enable, at least partially, content layer encryption operations for the transfer of the multimedia content from the source device to the rendering device.