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Comment by pcmonk | Hacker News Reader

For the record, that's not pure terminal (it opens up another window). This project works even in a bare vterm. I'd love to see this work over ssh.

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It will draw an X11 window if there is an X display. Unset DISPLAY and it will render in the terminal: $ DISPLAY= mplayer ...

Updated command for clarity (might want to fullscreen your terminal with this):

    $ DISPLAY= mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:width=640:height=480:device=/dev/video0 -fps 15 -vo caca

Sweet, I didn't realize that. Sadly, the result flashes on and off and is essentially unusable for me (either in xterm or a TTY on Slackware64 14.0). I can tell it's working, though.

This also seems to work over ssh, though, which is cool.

Add the -quiet option to mplayer.

That fixed it. Thanks.

I can confirm it works fine at a raw terminal, even on Linux TTY. You might have to unset DISPLAY as recommended in the other comment.

One big tip for that mode of mplayer, use the 'd' key to switch dithering modes. Keep switching until you get to Floyd-Steinberg for the best quality (IMHO).

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