receiving a video stream and an audio stream;

playing a program in real time, wherein the program is rendered from the video and audio streams;

compressing the video stream and the audio stream using a video compression engine and an audio compression engine respectively;

storing information relating to the compressed video and audio streams and the video and audio compression engines in a sequence header;

multiplexing the compressed video and audio streams along with synchronization information to form a plurality of coded audio and video frames;

forming a plurality of media units, wherein each media unit includes at least one video frame and at least one or more corresponding audio frames, wherein each media unit includes a first video frame that is independently decodable, wherein each media unit is an independently decodable entity, and wherein the plurality of media units have a fixed duration;

storing the plurality of media units in a memory;

storing a plurality of starting addresses in a table, wherein each of the plurality of starting addresses corresponds to one of the plurality of media units;

retrieving the sequence header in response to receipt of an instant replay command;

selecting and configuring appropriate video and audio decompression engines based on the retrieved sequence header;

identifying an instant replay starting address from the table in response to receipt of the instant replay command;

retrieving one or more of the plurality of media units from the memory starting with the media unit associated with the instant replay starting address; and

demultiplexing the one or more retrieved media units into compressed video and audio data for respective delivery to the video and audio decompression engines.