As we know, the PS4 Pro is just around the corner, and I have my sites on it.  I've been doing a little research, and it seems that the PS4 cannot store media such as pictures and music on its HDD.  The system can only playback these files if it serves as a media server such as a PC or an external source such as a flash drive.  I personally love having my audio ripped to my PS3 and would like to do the same with the PS4.  Is there a legit reason why Sony is not allowing the storage of these media on the PS4 HDD?

Can you store videos? just wondering...

Probably to sell spotify on playstation accounts? I use it now and I'll be honest the integration with Spotify on the ps4 really does make up for its lacking media abilitys.

As for putting movies on the ps4 and watching them btw, the media player in the console is a fucking trocious, I've had very little success with it playing various mp4 files, between files being incompatible or just playing partially and then stopping... again Netflix/Youtube/WWE network on the ps4 all function fantastically well, so downloady piraty stuff takes a back seat to legit media on the console for me.

Almost certain you cannot, you can store gameplay videos of your games, but you cannot capture during video playback or on any of the video apps.

Edit - Even if you could, as I said above the in built media player is horrible, really just compatibility issues everywhere, unless it got a major update recently?

Hmmm, how does it compare to ps3's media player

I've never had it pop up that Bravia thing which mutes movies like the PS3 does with some pirated files... but at the same time I genuinely have only tried to use it on less than 20 video files with a close to 0% success rate on watching a video from start to finish. Mid way through videos it will just encounter an error or desync with the audio. It is just non functional basically.

Google search it lol

Not sure is neogaf a bad site to link here... know there is some odd history, but anyways this thread seems to sum it up

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1076611

Hmmm weird.

So basically, I should just get the ps4/pro only for gaming and not expect much from anything else right?

Well... no, you see while the media player for just "files from usb sticks" is awful, it has a ton of other ways to watch media, the youtube app is fantastic, Netflix is so nicely layed out at 1080p TV size anyway and opens in seconds from booting the console, the WWE network offers perfect quality through the app too for main events, music wise Spotify is baked into the UI of the PS4 for playing songs during gameplay, even with a free account you can add all the songs you love and listen to them in games (you'll get around 2 mins of adverts per 20 mins of songs)

Oh Crunchyroll is on the ps4 too, if you've never used that, fantastic Anime streaming applet, and Plex is also available for the PS4 now if you have any experience using Plex in your home the PS4 will add itself to your network without any hassle and find all of your shared videos to play on the system.

It's just that media player for mp4s from usb... it just doesn't really do the job.

Mhmm thanks for your insights as always!

With so little memory (it goes fast), you don't want to store any thing but games on it, anyway. I just hate that it doesn't recognize my external HDD. I have a bazillion movies on it and the Xbox One's fast forward sucks. PS3 is still my go to system for watching video from a hard drive.

PS4's media player does recognize my thumb drive but whether it plays my content is a crap shoot. I'm hoping for a programming upgrade because I'm getting a new 4k TV this week-- but if the TV plays video the way that I think it will, I won't even need to use the media player on any of my consoles.