I tried using EXTERNAL to play streams from vlc on a Linux platform. That
failed since the URL field would need to have a suffix of an URL to scan
in order to enable playing of streams like .pls with vlc and lynx. If
that is possible using EXTERNAL, I didn't find it described in lynx.cfg.
Might another way around this problem be some good entries in a .mailcap
file? If so, I could study the .mailcap file format and maybe come up
with some good entries to share that will more completely enable mplayer
and vlc working with lynx and share those with the list when I get them
working. Ultimately such a .mailcap file might be a little extra support
for the lynx browser for users to download and install. I have retired
and my my own computer equipment nobody else uses so would have time to
figure out as much as possible along these lines if there's interest.
Finally, if for some of this the wheel has already been invented I don't
see any good sense in reinventing such a wheel.