Watch Any Video in ASCII

I discovered this by accident when trying to find out how to get XINE to use an ISO file as a DVD. (xine dvd://full/path/to/iso/file.iso)

Aparently the xine-ui package with Slackware comes with a program to play video in ASCII text! (aaxine) The picture quality isn’t that great up close, but if you sit back the picture isn’t that bad. Ironically any text that is displayed in the movie becomes indestiguishable unless it’s really big, so good luck reading the warning label at the beginning. (haven’t tried to get subtitles working though)

XINE is supposed to have color support using the caca library (Color AsCii Art library) but every time I tried to use it XINE crashed.

Here’s a screenshot of aaxine playing “The Alliance” from NBC’s The Office (US).