bigb
This song reminds me of being a student during wintertime. There's a time at the end of finals week when school is nearly abandoned. I worked on campus in an office buried deep in a basement. Those last days of the semester were peaceful, somber, and a little depressing. I'd sit in my office working while listening to Fleet Foxes. All the while aware that few people even knew I was there, and that another semester passed by.
Did the trick for me!
Is freemediaheckyeah an IPTV service? Plex or Jellyfin can manage IPTV streams. Plex needs additional software (e.g., xTeVe) to take an m3u playlist and convert it into a tuner.
https://blog.iptvinsider.com/watch-iptv-on-plex/
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/live-tv/setup-guide/
Biblically accurate controller
If there's a sub-$500 tablet that supports Ubuntu and has a kid-friendly case, consider me interested! I'd love to have full control over a video streaming tablet for my kids.
I love the PBS apps too, those will be a permanent install on our kids' devices. I'll check out Epic too.
Like OP, I'll try to avoid the worst of Google Play Store and YouTube Kids for as long as possible. My oldest is still a toddler so we're still in control of what she sees and does. It's inevitable that they'll encounter that stuff at school or other houses, but I hope they'll be disinterested and watching some YouTube slop will only be a curiosity rather than an addiction/coping mechanism.
My wife and I recently rewatched an episode of the original Power Rangers series and my god was that terrible. It was my favorite show when I was 7, but at least it fostered an early love for mecha shows. ;)
My kid got an Android tablet for a 6-hour car ride for vacation. I don't plan to use it unless we're taking a similarly long car ride or hospital stay.
I added a 512GB micro SD card and filled it with downloaded videos from my home server. Most of the time it's in airplane mode.
I use metube and Pinchflat.
Metube is great for one-off video downloads and works for many sites including social media. This comes in handy a lot when I want to send a short reel to friends without linking to Facebook, etc.
Pinchflat automatically downloads my favorites playlists and a couple other channels that I follow. These videos go into specific folders that are linked to Plex libraries.