Whoa! That was it!
I renamed the duplicate
aacs directory (it's was an older version apparently left over from a system restore) and
2001ASO played immediately.
Considering this, should it be written up as a (possible)
bug for
VLC? ...
VLC tracking down possible
aacs folders and not being complete enough to test all such folders before giving up with an error (and maybe alerting the user to multiple folders)?