A digital video transmission system that operates with three different video rendering paths. A first rendering path operates by receiving display requests and rendering bit-mapped graphics in a local screen buffer. The display information in that local screen buffer is then encoded and transmitted to a remote display system that recreates the content of that local screen buffer in a video buffer of remote display system. A second rendering path operates by receiving encoded video stream requests that can be decoded by the remote display system. Such encoded video streams are sent to the remote display system with minimal addition transport encoding. The third rendering path handles encoded video streams that cannot be handled natively by the remote display system. Such video streams may be either transcoded before transmission or decoded and stored within the local screen buffer.