A new scheme is proposed for broadcasting video signals over heterogeneous networks. The scheme is based on multiple-description coding (MDC) and aims to suppress the threshold effect. Each description is independently generated and can be used alone or together with other descriptions to reconstruct the video signal. The performance tradeoff is analyzed in an information theoretic manner and it is shown that the performance of the proposed scheme approaches the optimum rate-distortion bound under certain source and channel assumptions. Practical simulation results with video signals are provided and discussed.