pfr I going to find someone to bring it back from the dead
From the mpv-0.33.0 (which is now in 2020Q4) changelog: vo_sixel: implement terminal video output using sixel
Let's try it:
$ mpv --vo=help
Available video outputs:
libmpv render API for libmpv
gpu Shader-based GPU Renderer
vdpau VDPAU with X11
xv X11/Xv
sdl SDL 2.0 Renderer
vaapi VA API with X11
x11 X11 (software scaling)
null Null video output
image Write video frames to image files
tct true-color terminals
drm Direct Rendering Manager (software scaling)
$
Uh-Oh! no sixel
compiled in (but tct
is present--which is even more retro). But, after installing libsixel
and compiling mpv from source, I can tell you that sixel movies work...as expected: slow, fiddly to get right (must scale videos to below 1000x1000), not worth the effort.
Your turn now: convince the mpv pkgsrc maintainer to also add sixel output to mpv.