System and method for providing quality-referenced multimedia

A computer-based system, comprising:

• a receiver configured to receive multimedia from at least one multimedia source;
• one or more processors configured to generate a quality reference based on the multimedia, format the quality reference into an elementary stream, and associate the elementary stream with the multimedia to form quality-referenced multimedia;
• and
• a transmitter configured to transmit the quality-referenced multimedia to output at one or more output devices.

A computer-implemented method, comprising:

• receiving, at a media device, quality-referenced multimedia from a network provider, wherein the quality-referenced multimedia comprises one or more multimedia files and a quality reference file;
• determining, at the media device, degradation information of the multimedia based on at least information in the quality reference file;
• and
• improving multimedia quality based at least in part on the degradation information determined at the media device.