Kids and Family Channels

The Kidz Zone bundle. 15 channels, built from your own library.

This is the bundle for the hour between getting home and dinner, when the TV goes on and nobody wants a negotiation about what to watch.

Fifteen channels across the whole family range. FAMILY HOUR is the mixed one, for when there are different ages in the room. DIZ FLICKS and DIZNEY TOONS split the animated features from the cartoons, DIZ JUNIOR goes younger, and DIZ TV is the live action side. PIXAR MOVIES, DREAMWORKS and MINION HQ each pull their own studio's films out of the pile. ANIMATION and TOON TOWN are the wider cartoon channels. SLIME TV is the loud one. NETFLIX KIDS gathers the originals you have saved. Then the older end: TWEEN TV, TEEN DRAMA and FAMILY TV, for the kids who have decided cartoons are beneath them and would like everyone to know it.

Those names describe the kind of title that can air on each channel, and nothing more. Every one of them is filled from your own Plex or Jellyfin library, so the pool is whatever you put on the server. There is no catalogue behind the app, no account with anybody, and nothing can appear out of nowhere. If a film is not on your shelf, it cannot turn up on a channel. If your shelf has no animated features on it at all, DIZ FLICKS never appears, because an empty channel in the guide is worse than one that is not there.

The practical reason a channel beats a menu here is simple: a menu is a shopping trip. Hand a six year old a grid of two hundred posters and you have started a twenty minute conversation about whether they are allowed the one with the scary bit. A channel that is already playing skips all of it. It was on, it is halfway through, that is the end of the discussion.

It also rescues the films nobody picks. Every house has three that get watched into the ground and forty that do not, and the forty are not worse, they are just further down the shelf. A schedule does not have a favourite.

Nostalgex reads the library, sorts the family titles into these channels, builds a real schedule and starts playing partway through, the way a TV channel does.

Free, open source under the MIT license, runs on Apple TV with tvOS 18 or later, works with Plex and Jellyfin.

Channels in Kidz Zone

  • Ch 20 FAMILY HOUR
  • Ch 21 DIZ FLICKS
  • Ch 22 DIZNEY TOONS
  • Ch 23 DIZ JUNIOR
  • Ch 24 DIZ TV
  • Ch 25 ANIMATION
  • Ch 26 SLIME TV
  • Ch 27 PIXAR MOVIES
  • Ch 28 MINION HQ
  • Ch 29 TWEEN TV
  • Ch 30 TEEN DRAMA
  • Ch 31 FAMILY TV
  • Ch 32 NETFLIX KIDS
  • Ch 33 DREAMWORKS
  • Ch 34 TOON TOWN

Channel names describe the kind of titles that can air from your own library. Nostalgex is not affiliated with or endorsed by any studio, network, or streaming service.

Kidz Zone FAQ

What channels are in this bundle?

Fifteen: FAMILY HOUR, DIZ FLICKS, DIZNEY TOONS, DIZ JUNIOR, DIZ TV, ANIMATION, SLIME TV, PIXAR MOVIES, MINION HQ, TWEEN TV, TEEN DRAMA, FAMILY TV, NETFLIX KIDS, DREAMWORKS and TOON TOWN. You see the ones your own library can fill.

Do I need my own kids movies and shows?

Yes. Every channel is built from the Plex or Jellyfin library you already own. Nostalgex supplies the channels and the schedule, not the titles.

Can I leave it on without watching what it picks?

That is what it is for. The channels only draw from the family titles on your own server, so nothing can appear that you did not put there yourself.

Why is a channel missing from my guide?

A channel turns on once your library has enough matching titles to fill it. A couple of animated films is not a channel yet, which is why most people see six or seven of the fifteen rather than all of them.

Does it cost anything?

No. The app is free and open source under the MIT license.

Start watching

Nostalgex is free and open source. Set it up with Nostalgex for Plex or Nostalgex for Jellyfin, get the Apple TV app from the App Store, or see the whole lineup on the channel guide.

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