
Show HN: ASCII TV – Stream ASCII movies in your terminal with curl - mraison
https://github.com/martinraison/ascii-tv
======
m45t3r
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
    

Reduce the font size to increase resolution. Also, a GPU accelerated terminal
like Kitty [2] is recommended, or the video will be painfully slow.

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

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

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

    
    
      telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

~~~
mraison
Indeed, I came across this project while googling the idea! I figured out SSL
would be a nice feature to have - surely you wouldn’t want your Star Wars
ASCII stream to be tampered with, would you? ;)

~~~
colinbartlett
To think that anyone on the wire could manipulate the stream so that Greedo
shoots first... horrifying.

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jamiek88
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.

~~~
mraison
Thanks for the kind words :) I do try hard to "keep the spirit" as much as I
can. Like everyone on HN I need to balance that with many other things, but I
figured out a few lines of Go + a heroku app wouldn't be too time-consuming :)

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

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O1111OOO
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](https://github.com/nitram509/ascii-telnet-server)

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hsx
This is really neat!

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

    
    
      curl parrot.live

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CloudNetworking
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.

~~~
fsiefken
yes, but what about the audio?

~~~
CloudNetworking
No audio over SSH :(

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

~~~
ineedasername
I would think its compression rate would be pretty good too.

