Client side you could always use DirectShow to decode and render your stream. Live555 can handle the stream and pass it to a graph.
Render RTSP H.264 video stream using live555
If you're unfamiliar with DirectShow and filters there's a lot of stuff on MSDN
That should allow you to render to a surface of your choosing, it's always wise to render something on no signal though, just so you can tell the difference between no stream and a blank stream.