Digital data transmission/reception having adaptive error control

A conditional replenishment video data transmission system involves the transmission of updating digital data for clusters of consecutive picture elements, all or most of which show a change since the previous frame, in lines of a raster over an image to be transmitted. The lines of the raster are numbered cyclically in groups of 8, the numbers being part of line synchronizing code words, and the position along a line of the first element of each cluster is identified by a number. The data are transmitted at a constant rate from a transmitter buffer to a receiver buffer and an auxiliary data store records the addresses of the line synchronizing code words in the receiver buffer. The address of the receiver buffer read by a reading means can be corrected by reference to the address data in the auxiliary storage means if for example the line numbers do not follow in sequence or the element addresses are not in ascending order due to corruption during transmission. Alternatively, the reading means may be controlled at all times by the address data in the auxiliary storage means and not only when a tracking error has occurred. The tracking of the received data in the receiver buffer by the reading means may show a consistent error relative to the position predicted by the assumed transmission delay time; preferably such tracking errors are corrected by a whole frame jump using a receiver buffer of more than one frame capacity.