Error concealment is used to hide the effects of errors detected within digital video information. A novel spatial error concealment technique is disclosed for use when the error concealment mode decision determines that spatial error concealment should be used for reconstruction. The novel spatial error concealment technique divides a corrupt macroblock into multiple regions, such as, a corner region, a row adjacent to the corner region, a column adjacent to the corner region, and a remainder main region. Those regions are then reconstructed and information from earlier reconstructed regions may be used in later reconstructed regions. Finally, a macroblock refreshment technique is disclosed for preventing error propagation from harming non-corrupt inter-blocks. Specifically, an inter-macroblock may be ‘refreshed’ using spatial error concealment if there has been significant error caused damage that may cause the inter-block to propagate the errors.