Disclosed is a method and apparatus for transmitting video signals from a remote computer to a local computer over a network such as a LAN, WAN, the Internet, etc. The method receives and digitizes signals from the remote computer, conditions the signals, and compresses the signals for efficient transmission over the network connection. The method and apparatus also utilizes a cache of recently transmitted video to further decrease the data needed for transmission of the signals. The conditioning and caching use frame buffers of video signals that are divided into cells to reduce noise in the image, and to limit the portions of the video signals that must be transmitted. The present invention maybe used in conjunction with a keyboard video mouse switch to enable a user at the local computer to select one of a number of remote devices for remote operation.