http://blog.us.playstation.com/2015/06/15/media-player-coming-to-ps4/
Essentially DLNA support (playback via a media server) and/or media access on a USB device. Unlike the PS3 though, that media (on a USB storage device) cannot be transferred to the PS4 (and no CD playback either though in this day and age, that shouldn’t be a big deal).
But it’s sort of just a barebones media player application as it supports only a limited amount of video and audio CODECs.
I did a series of tests using Universal Media Server on my Mac and just shared a bunch of folders to see how the media app would handle displaying folders and just how much media it would actually recognize. Unsurprisingly, lot of folders came back with “no playable media” since there were older videos that used either DivX or Xvid. The app still had trouble recognizing a lot of MP4 videos that were encoded with x264 (technically still H.264 but there have been cases where such encoded files don’t follow the strict standard which is probably what Sony is using).
For the media it did recognize, there weren’t any issues with playback. I guess one cannot really complain since it’s better than nothing. But the app lacks basic stuff like searching and more sorting options. So yes, while this was one of the most often times requested feature that users wanted restored from something that worked well on the PS3, it is sort of a mediocre attempt. As I noted before, software is not Sony’s strong point.
I wonder how long it will now take them to bring the PS3’s custom avatar support to the PS4. Yes, I know the PS4 supports linking to a Facebook profile where it can use that for real name profiles – same goes for using the PS app to set a profile image). What I am talking about is the avatars used for public profiles. Premium avatars can only be downloaded/purchased and changed from the PS3.
