This reminds me of libcaca [1], which anyone interested in this should check out. It's integrated in various tools, including ffmpeg, mpv, and of course VLC (Sam Hocevar, who wrote libcaca, was also a key VLC contributor at its beginnings).
The biggest difference I see (apart from the used programing language) is that libcaca outputs colored ascii art.
The biggest difference I see (apart from the used programing language) is that libcaca outputs colored ascii art.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libcaca