A visual communications system and a method of controlling the same for pausing the screens of two terminals at quite the same image. Video communications terminals receive the same channel in their respective broadcast program receiving units. A first video communications terminal temporarily stores the video of the received channel in the temporary storage memory. When a user pauses operation of the first terminal, it temporarily stores a screen pause time obtained by adding a predetermined time to the current time, and transmits a screen pause command and the screen pause time to a second video communications terminal. The second terminal pauses the video at the screen pause time if possible in time. Otherwise, it pauses the video immediately, and transmits a response with its own image pause time to the first terminal. The first terminal displays an image corresponding to the image pause time of the second terminal memory.