New capabilities will allow conventional broadcast transmission to be available to mobile devices. The present embodiments describe an apparatus and method for encoding and decoding signals. A method (1100) includes the steps of generating (1110) data blocks, encoding (1140) a first set of data blocks using a first encoding rate, encoding (1140) a second set of data blocks using a second encoding rate, and generating (1180) a control packet, the control packet identifying the first set of data blocks and the first encoding rate, and identifying the second set of data blocks and the second encoding rate. An apparatus (1200) includes a first decoder (1216) receiving data and decoding a first subset of the data, including a control packet, at a first decoding rate and a controller (1260) controlling the operation of the first decoder (1216) based on the decoded control packet.