If I were to buy a PS4, what size HDD would you recommend me upgrade to and what brand?

PS4 Slim is just around the corner.  And just in case I opt NOT to go with the Slim, I better grab a non-slim while I can.  But I want to make sure I "future proof" the HDD space to minimize having to upgrade.

Some factors to consider:

1) I prefer physical media over digital when given a choice.

2) I don't mind digital games when it's my ONLY choice.

3) If I absolutely love a game, I try to aquire all DLC for it.

4) I will not be storing a bunch of full sized movies on it.  Maybe a bunch of short clips.

5) I could use the PS4 as an audio/music media center as I once did with my PS3.

Please understand that some of the above factors may not apply becasue of my ignorance of PS4 features.  Also, please discuss any features I might want to consider that will affect HDD space.  Thanks, all.

How fast is your internet connection? That also has a baring, if it takes you a month to download a 50gb game, you're not going to want to ever delete it off your HDD.

But I'd say 1TB would be more than enough., 500gb may be too as you're mainly physical. It's very VERY quick to install a game from a disc, the only reason you'd need a big HDD with mainly physical games is updates, I don't think you can uninstall a game without removing updates, so if you have a slow internet connection (or a game with 15gb+ updates) you'll not want to temporarily uninstall games to free up space.

1TB. 2TB would of course be even better.
500GB is not enough if you want to have a few games installed.
Games generally install fast if you have them on disk, but then it will take time to download patches

Games are huge and have to keep deleting/reinstalling them is quite a pain. Remember that even if its on disk, you have to re-download the patches, that are quite big.

As for the HDD brand, my recommendation is always Western Digital. I have 4 1TB drives on my desktop, several ones on notebooks, one on the PS3 and all are great. HGST and Samsung are also good. Seagate is pure crap, don't buy it, I've had a lot of issues with them.

If you are going to upgrade, I recommend to get a big drive that will last the gen, so a 2TB one is the best choice.

Anyway, I wouldn't recommend buying a PS4 now. It's around 350 dollars. The rumoured price of the Neo can be as low as 400 while the Slim could be even as cheap as 250. After the Slim launch, they will do a fire sale of the regular model. Actually, you could pay just a but more than the OG model and get a Neo.

500gb is more than enough. Remember that you can start games either immediately or minutes after you put the disc in the PS4 so deleting older games until you want to play them is no problem.

Mind that they actually take between 30 to 60 minutes to install. PS4 does it in a sequence, so the first stages of the game are installed first and you can play them after 1 or 2 minutes. Also, online games libe Battlefront put a tutorial in the begining during install time. It's great when it's your first time playing a game and you will follow the initial path, but it may not be as great when you are already used to playing that game and want to jump to a point in the middle of it.

This might seem crazy but keep the 500. I use to hate the small space until i realized that it was actually helping me finish games and keep my backlog small. If you have no more space on the HDD but get a new game i feel like it forces me to beat one of the games already on the HDD before uninstalling it as Installing games and downloading patches can be annoying, especially if you have under 1mb download speeds like myself.

I actually almost completely filled my 2TB since launch and I hate deleting stuff, deff recommend 2TB and I would recommend 3 or 4 if it was available lol

Even on physical games? I've never had to wait more than 15 seconds to install a physical game, and then upon getting into that game I've never noticed being locked out of any features.

Digital I defininitely have, but never had this personally on the physical games that I own.

This is whats in my PS4 right now. 

Its a 1TB seagate SSHD. With 32GB of nand flash storage. Dont think you need more than 1TB. Even at an average of 50GB per game you can still have up to 16 games stored on your HDD. I will recommend just deleting games ur done playing.