Long-term evolution (LTE) is emerging as a major candidate for 4G cellular networks to satisfy the increasing demands for mobile broadband services, particularly multimedia delivery. Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology combined with orthogonal frequency division multiple access and more efficient modulation/coding schemes (MCS) are key physical layer technologies in LTE networks. However, in order to fully utilize the benefits of the advances in physical layer technologies, the MIMO configuration and MCS need to be dynamically adjusted to derive the promised gains of 4G at the application level. This paper provides a performance evaluation of video traffic with variations in the physical layer transmission parameters to suit the varying channel conditions. A quantitative analysis is provided using the perceived video quality as a video quality measure (evaluated using no-reference blocking and blurring metrics), as well as transmission delay. Experiments are performed to measure the performance with changes in modulation and code rates in poor and good channel conditions. We discuss how an adaptive scheme can optimize the performance over a varying channel.