A system is described that allows simultaneous display on a display screen of bit-map, graphic, still video picture, motion video picture or background. A frame memory containing the page to be displayed is located in an the SDRAM. A display controller reads the frame memory block by block and transfers the data to a Fifo. For each pixel, the OSD decoder reads the bits required to display the current pixel from the FIFO. The number of bits per pixel varies during the display depending upon the mode. The pixel selector and its controller select the bits of data from the FIFO to form the current pixel.