System and method for pacing the rate of display of decompressed video data

Video data is decompressed in a coder/decoder (CODEC) and then scaled in a scaler device before being provided to a frame buffer within a display adapter of a data processing system. Since the scaling of the video data often results in a significant increase in the required bandwidth, a buffer implemented within the scaling device may reach a threshold level whereby it is not desired that any more scaled data be received before being transmitted to the frame buffer. When such a threshold level is reached, a stall signal is sent to the interface between the scaler device and the CODEC device providing the pixel data, which results in the stopping of the transmission of pixel data from the CODEC to the scaler device. Assertion of the stall signal results in the suspension of the transmission of the horizontal and vertical synchronization signals and the pixel clock signal from the scaler device to the CODEC device.