Systems and methods are disclosed for supporting a pull data flow scheme in an A/V decoder. One method relates to processing data using an A/V decoder comprising receiving the data from a data stream and recovering a system time reference from the received data. The received data is processed using a clock asynchronous to the system time reference and pulled into an output device using a system adapted to support a pull data flow. The processed data is output using a time reference locked to the system time reference.