The VideoLAN project has a support forum you can visit for help.
Make sure you assign the .pls file extension to VLC. Once done, Safari will launch VLC directly when you use the Winamp directory.
How to assign pls to VLC: Save any .pls file to the desktop. Select it and edit properties using Command-I. In the dialog box, select "VLC" from the drop down menu under the "Open with:" tab. Click "Change All..." to make the association global. Now all pls files should open with VLC.
Shout-out to Kevin McCarthy and Eric Ortego for the following tip! To get Firefox to use VLC, there are a couple more steps. The first time you try to launch a .pls, it will ask if you want to use iTunes. Check the "do this everytime" box in the dialog and click OK. Quit iTunes (because it will fail to play). In Firefox, select Preferences->Content->Manage. You will see that .pls has been assigned to iTunes. Edit that entry with "Change Action..." and change the assignment to VLC. Voila. Now you can open VLC by default. A forum post related to this topic is here.
Note that VLC does not yet support 5.1 surround.
Avoid the Winamp surround sound gotchas by making sure:
that Winamp is configured to use DirectSound, not wavOut (should only be critical for 5.1)
your sound card DirectSound driver actually supports 5.1 output. Cards may require that you check the 'Allow h/w Acceleration' box in Winamp (e.g. Audigy 2 ZS)
you aren't using the mp3PRO plug-in decoder from Thomson (you may have to manually delete it)
Winamp owns the .pls playlist formats (iTunes and Windows Media Player can be greedy for the .pls type)
Windows Media Player is not set to play as a toolbar inside the IE browser
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