The hardware implementation issues for an adaptive multialphabet arithmetic coder are discussed. A simple weighted history model is proposed to encode the video data. This model uses a weighted finite buffer to model the cumulative density function of the arithmetic coder. The performance of the weighted history model is evaluated together with several other well-known models. To access, search, and update the cumulative frequencies corresponding to model symbols in real time, we present a low complexity multibase cumulative occurrence array structure that can offer the probability information for high-speed encoding and decoding. For the application in video compression, the multialphabet arithmetic coding with weighted history model can be a good choice as the variable length coding of the video symbols.