One of my friends has a Westinghouse SK-26H590D LCD TV with an integrated digital tuner. He's got a 35' tower and a Wade/Delhi-Jerrold HD-2900 U/V antenna, a Blonder Tongue pre-amp and a broken CM rotator (although, that isn't really important).

He normally watches TV starting at about 7 in the evening, so I would presume that reception conditions are good and fairly stable.

He reports that digital reception is good at first, and macroblocking on just about every channel is non-existent or extremely rare.

The longer he has the TV on, the more frequent and worse the macroblocking becomes. To the point where watching pretty much any channel is a pain. Is this a common occurence/is there anything that can be done top fix it besides replaceing the TV?

One of my friends has a Westinghouse SK-26H590D LCD TV with an integrated digital tuner. He's got a 35' tower and a Wade/Delhi-Jerrold HD-2900 U/V antenna, a Blonder Tongue pre-amp and a broken CM rotator (although, that isn't really important).

He normally watches TV starting at about 7 in the evening, so I would presume that reception conditions are good and fairly stable.

He reports that digital reception is good at first, and macroblocking on just about every channel is non-existent or extremely rare.

The longer he has the TV on, the more frequent and worse the macroblocking becomes. To the point where watching pretty much any channel is a pain. Is this a common occurence/is there anything that can be done top fix it besides replaceing the TV?

He might want to invest $10 in one of the cheap (after coupon) converter boxes and temporarily use it as the tuner instead of the built in one. If the problem disappears, he knows the problem is in the TV. Plus with a 26" screen it might not look that bad.

He reports that analog channels are stable and DVDs all play fine, so it's most definitely the tuner or something. I'd really doubt if his antenna is at fault.

A $10 box is an option, but the TV is HD and they've got 5.1 surround sound, so that isn't the ideal solution. He does have a few HDMI inputs on the back of the set, so I think an HD converter box might be a better option, when they ever come out.

Your friend might want to have a look at the Samsung DTB-H260F HDTV ATSC receiver. HDMI, Component outputs, as well as S-Video and Composite (but you cannot view the menus on anything but the HDMI and Component outputs).