1. An electronic system comprising: a bus couplable to a main memory having stored therein data corresponding to images to be decoded and also decoded data corresponding to images that have previously been decoded; a decoder coupled to the bus for receiving compressed images and for outputting data for displaying the decoded images on a display device, the decoder receiving data from the main memory corresponding to at least one previously decoded image and to a current image to be decoded and outputting decoded data corresponding to a current image to be displayed, the current image being stored in the main memory; a microprocessor system coupled to the main memory, the microprocessor system storing non-image data in and retrieving data from the main memory; and an arbiter circuit coupled to both the microprocessor system and the decoder for controlling the access to said main memory by the decoder and the microprocessor.