Not ASCII, however a cool hack using mpv is that it can display actual videos in a terminal emulator that supports true color output [1]. Just run the following command:

  mpv -vo tct video_file.mkv

[1]: https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728

[2]: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/

I think you can also just use telnet to see star wars:

  telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

Now this is hacker news!!

Ludicrous on the surface yet brilliant.

Kudos to the creator, and it’s great that such a senior engineer with his track record and contributions still has that spirit in him.

Practical applications are irrelevant, this is a fun, cool project. I love seeing this sort of thing on HN.

Really like the format of the "movie" file. Very easy to work with:

Line 1: time.Duration

Lines 2-14: frameHeight (currently set to 13 lines in the code on this and the original[0])

Options for (1) pause/play (2) back: frame by frame (3) forward: frame by frame : could make this a pretty good presentation app, ebook tool, story-teller...

[0] https://github.com/nitram509/ascii-telnet-server

This is really neat!

While we're on the topic of neat things you can do with `curl`, check out:

  curl parrot.live

A colleague and I did this at uni in 2001 or so. SSH to his box at home with a TV receiver and a video library that output ASCII graphics.

It's surprising that with the ultra-high-resolution monitors common today, this might actually be on the verge of being practical.

Brilliant