A first aspect of the present invention concerns a method for controlling a multimedia application on a terminal, in particular a mobile terminal, wherein multimedia data are received from a remote source and are processed for being presented on a display of the terminal, comprising the steps of: a) detecting an operating state of at least one service component of the terminal concerning the presentation of the data of the multimedia application; b) generating an item of state information characterizing the operating state of the at least one service component; c) generating a message, comprising: the state information, and/or an item of information characterizing the state information, which characterizes the data density that can be processed as a maximum prescribed by the operating state of the service component for presenting the multimedia data, and/or an instruction to the remote source with respect to the adaptation of the data and/or transmission of the data to the terminal, in order to adapt the data and/or the transmission of the data to the data density that can be processed as a maximum prescribed by the operating state of the service component for presenting the multimedia data; d) transmitting the message to the remote source; e) receiving the multimedia data; and f) processing the multimedia data for presentation on the display of the terminal. The invention also concerns a method for the adaptation and transmission of multimedia data, a software product and a device.