Also a paying YT Premium subscriber. I live in a rural part of CA where there isn't much 5G reception. For extremely long drives in my minivan, I allow my toddler to watch Ms. Rachel on the screen via an HDMI port input from my iPhone. Youtube Premium videos have DRM that disallow downloads to play over HDMI, so I had to do what you did and add them as files locally to VLC and play them from there.