For WMFVideoPlayer it supports more formats but there are known issues with it, like playing in reverse. Which fork were you using and can you describe the errors?
The direct show player is nice and less of a headache than using WMF (from a programmers standpoint) though there are similar limitations like its more limited codec support, if using a mov, mp4, avi you will need to install codecs to support them. There is hardware acceleration that is available to both but neither take advantage of that unfortunately, not currently at least