Performance of H.264 with isolated bit error: Packet decode or discard?

During wireless video transmission, when an error is detected at the receiver, the packet is dropped immediately and error concealment is performed. However, this procedure does not always provide satisfactory results, especially when the motion is complicated or scene change occurs. Moreover, there are often uncorrupted macroblocks in the distorted packet. Hence, it can be important to utilize the information in the distorted packet. In this work, our aim is to explore which produces better quality: discarding or decoding the corrupted packet. First, we examine the effect of an error in each syntax element on the visual quality. Second, we compare the visual degradation caused by an error in each syntax element with that caused by discarding the whole packet. We also evaluate the effects of motion and quantization.