A method and system for buffering pixels of a pixel line such that complex processing circuitry between a horizontal format converter buffer and a horizontal format converter filter is not required. The horizontal format converter buffer includes multiple parallel circular buffers that are addressable by a controller such that a variable sequence of pixels may be read from the horizontal format converter buffer to the horizontal format converter filter. The controller may turn off selected circular buffers of the horizontal format converter buffer if the selected buffers are not necessary for processing a pixel line.