100% DirectShow playback, is it possible?

[phelme]

So I've apparently collected enough of a goofy assortment of media (usually through compression and container experimentation) that I can't get 100% playback with DirectShow. The culprits are usually either of type mp4a or mp4v in an MP4 container. Xvid codecs have taken care of some of the issue, but I still get some graphs where either the audio or video chain is broken under DirectShow. Meaning there is no pin available from that type from the file and so under SageTV there is either no video or audio. These files are playable under VLC or the SageTV Player, so they're not completely messed up.

Currently (under XP) I'm using ArcSoft (AAC, mkv, H.264, MPEG2), Gabest MP4 splitter, Xvid and AC3Filter. That covers most everything, but some oddball items are still slipping through. I'm not overly concerned about it, because I now found an mkv model that I use for everything, so future media should be fine.

Which brings up my biggest niggle with SageTV, and I guess the point of this post, why or why can't the SageTV Player be an automatic fallback when DirectShow tries and fails? Having to quit the client to change a setting in sageclient.properties seems quite archaic these days, not to mention unacceptable WAF. As far as I can tell, the option in Detailed Setup for choosing which player to use still does nothing.

Yes, I'm just ranting...