The concept is similar, in that with MPEG it is the encoder that is the harder of the two, since it has to deal with the noise and real-world effects in the source image.

What I should have written is that the "hard" part, which is generally left unspecified, is the part that removes redundancy. An MPEG encoder removes redundancy whilst its decoder adds redundancy. An FEC/communications encoder adds redundancy whilst its decoder removes redundancy.

Maybe they meant encoding, the file format.