Abstract: MPEG compressed video data is decompressed in a computer system by sharing computational decompression tasks between the computer system host microprocessor, the graphics accelerator, and a dedicated MPEG processor (video decoder engine) in order to make best use of resources in the computer system. Thus the dedicated MPEG processor is of minimum capability and hence advantageously minimum cost. The host microprocessor is used to decompress the MPEG upper data layers. The more powerful the host microprocessor, the more upper data layers it decompresses. The remainder of the decompression (lower data layers) is performed by the MPEG dedicated processor and/or the graphics accelerator. The video decoder engine is a fast hardwired processor. It has a graceful degradation capability to allow dropping of occasional video frames without displaying any part of a dropped video frame. The video decoder engine has a three stage pipeline structure to minimize circuitry and speed up operation.