Watch movies in ASCII art with VLC

Ever wanted to watch a movie in ASCII art? What’s that? You haven’t even thought about it before? In what might be the single most useless feature to ever grace a video player, VLC allows you to output any video playback as… ASCII art. Yes, the kind of ASCII art that was quite fancy on BBS’s in 1988. Other than the humor and prank value, I don’t see much point to this, but it is entertaining so here’s how you can watch movies in ASCII art with VLC player. BTW this tip is cross platform for all VLC players, Windows, Linux, and of course, Mac OS X.

Watch movies in ASCII art

* Go to VLC menu and to Preferences
* Click on the Video icon
* Click on the “Output Module” drop down, and select “Color ASCII art video output”
* Restart VLC, open a movie file, and be amazed

The screenshot above shows the visually stunning movie The Fall in visually ridiculous ASCII mode. Wow.