The avi on the left would most likely freeze another certain brand PVR because it has a packed bitstream and is over 1GB in size. I also note that it's audio is split across interleaves which can cause problems too. Your 'good' avi also has the audio frames split across interleaves, though it is MPEG1 and not AC3.
What you describe is all fairly standard behaviour for some files types on anything other than a PC.