This paper presents a solution for the hierarchical encoding of progressive HDTV sources, providing full downwards and upwards compatibility between HDTV, TV and High Quality Videophony (HQVT). As most of the video codecs at the present time are constituted with motioncompensated hybrid predictive4ransform structures, the solution is based on the splitting of transform coefficients blocks. A basic coding structure providing compatibility between two successive levels of the hierarchy is presented. A second point is devoted to the performance study of such a solution from the point of view of filtering and aliasing. This is done at the light of multirate filter banks theory.