An adaptive streaming system is described in which media content is provided by a media server as a sequence of consecutive media segments for being individually requested by a media client. A method implementation performed by a media client of the system comprises the generation of at least one request in relation to a media segment. The media segment is divided into multiple temporally scaling media segment levels and the at least one request includes a reference to at least one temporal level of the media segment. The media client then triggers transmission of the one or more request towards the media server and processes the one or more temporal levels of the media segment received from the media server in response to the one or more requests.