An apparatus (10) and method (40) is provided for detecting data within the vertical blanking interval (VBI) lines of a video or television signal. The VBI data detection (18) samples (42) at least one point from the VBI lines of a video signal and compares (44) at least one data characteristic, such as luminance, from the sample to a threshold to determine if the sample contains VBI data. If the sample contains VBI data, the VBI line from which the sample was taken is routed (46) to the processing unit of a video processing device. If no samples from a VBI line are found to contain VBI data, the VBI line is not processed further. The VBI data detection apparatus improves processing efficiency and resource allocation by allowing only those VBI lines containing VBI data to be processed by the video processing device.