1. A pipeline system for decoding a data stream of data having portions encoded according to different standards comprising: a sequence of pipeline stages, at least one of the pipeline stages being reconfigurable to operate according to the different standards; the at least one of the pipeline stages including processing circuitry with an active state which is entered when the data received by the at least one of the pipeline stages has a predetermined activation pattern, the predetermined activation pattern corresponding to one of the different standards; the at least one of the pipeline stages including a state machine having a current state and a previous state; and wherein the at least one of the pipeline stages is activated upon recognition of the predetermined activation pattern only upon a predetermined transition from the previous state to the current state.