An apparatus and method for allowing multiple high and low resolution SBI and conventional FPA imaging devices to use a common high resolution monitor and archive device without increasing or significantly changing the footprint of existing devices. This system and method uses a frame grabber for digitizing video from the legacy FPA devices, a frame mapper for rendering or mapping the FPA video into the SBI digital format, a converter for rasterizing SBI data streams into pixel-oriented FPA video frames, an input selector for selecting which FPA or SBI imaging device to display on a high resolution monitor, an processor for storing and manipulating frames of video, a video output encoder for converting the SBI frames into a video signal appropriate for display on the high resolution monitor, and an output means for connecting to a storage device for archiving video and images.