.dat vs .avs

I have tried to download a few plug-ins, but they are always .avs format and looking at the files in my plug-in folder the included one is a .dat format. I try to change the path to the directories that have the .avs format but it will not recognize them. This has been the case for multiple visual plug-ins so any help I can get is appreciated.

Thank you to all the Winamp smarties out there!