VLC plays .avi video OK in Senryu VM on Dell

Yes, just to test the theory that my inability to play videos in VLC-0.8.6d in either Senryu or Haiku on the EeePC 901 was due to a bug in the Haiku Intel 945G driver, I tried to run the same small .avi files in VLC-0.8.6d in a Senryu VM on my old Dell Desktop 4550 which has a (equally old) nVidia GeForce 4 MX 420 card.
And, indeed both worked. However, they were just a bit choppy but the picture quality really couldn't have been better. I tend to put the choppiness down to the fact that this is a VM (VMware Server) and basically everything in the VM works at about 10% (literally) of the native-install speed.
However, I did come across this thread which addresses a similar (if not identical) problem. The second post provides a number of potential solutions. I tried the first (uncheck skip frames) and it did seem to help just a little.
All-in-all, though, it does look like my problem is due to the Haiku Intel 945G driver bug which is being addressed in this ticket.
What's amazing is that the terminal output from VLC in the Senryu VM was exactly the same as the output from the same app in Senryu (native) on the EeePC 901. Here it is. Interestingly, the very same libavcodec compile problem is mentioned. However, seemingly this does not prevent playing of the video although it may well be contributing to the video choppiness).
Perhaps I'll need to install a native Senryu on the Dell just to check if the libavcodec problem is serious or not.