From what I've discovered, the PS4 media player only playstation certain type of mkv files, not all. thankfully, most my movies are compatible. 

Well, I see there are comments here of use a smart TV or use this and that instead, but I do definitely agree that it is a shame to have to power off one system and use another for watching certain files... that said you'll never be able to install Kodi on a console without some custom firmware so I guess I'll always have a PC built into my media center, still wish there was some things the PS4 could do or could do better

-Media player is just a tease

-Copying mp3s to it as easy as the ps3 would have been amazing

-it appears that you need to have the full space of a game if you want to patch it... so if I want to install a 100mb patch to a 50gb game like Fallout 4 I need to have 50GB of free space, it's really annoying sometimes to have to free up so much room for a tiny patch

-Having to install disc based games detracts from the ease of consoles (even if the ps4 does it very quickly and allows you to play most games as they install in my experience)

-That light on the controller just annoys me, waste of batteries when you just have one DS4 and there is no option in the menu either now to turn off the DS4 as there was on the ps3, so if I'm watching GMM on youtube which are generally 10 mins long it means that the only time the controller powers itself off is when I need to click on the next video, just complete waste of power since 10mins is the least amount of time you can set it to power off with.

But yeah... when it comes to those negative points I have found far far more great things about the system which I enjoy so it's very much my console of choice at the TV, even away from the TV streaming it to the Vita just works so well in my house since where the console is is central so I can even go upstairs and enjoy my console games in bed.

You just reminded me. I gave my Vita to my daughter right before Valkyria Chronicles released. That game was PERFECT for remote play. She won't give it back. She even changed the password.

Now, excuse me while I go cry.

haha, well it's coming up towards halloween? perhaps you could bribe her with a promise of some trick or treating around town?

Can't you just use an external HDD? I'd almost go as far as to say that you're doing something wrong if that's not how you're storing your media files already.

That's just the thing. I have two external HDDs. One of them (1tb WD Passport Ultra) isn't recognized in any capacity, whatsoever. The other (Seagate 500 gb something or other) is recognized but half the time, whatever I'm trying to watch (torrents) won't play.

Not a deal breaker by any means. I have too many other options. Still, it's disappointing as the ps3 (still an option) works so well with different media.

Oh right, a lot of external HDDs probably use NTFS, which isn't supported by PS4. That's an issue for sure. I too use NTFS because FAT32 doesn't support files bigger than 4 GB, and I don't like exFAT because it's not supported by default in a lot of Linux distributions (which I use from time to time). Other than that, there's no more issue than there would be if you were able to store media files on PS4 directly. Supported file formats are the same no matter where you store them. PS4 could, and probably even should, have better support for different file formats though. Just for the record, here's the list of file system and file formats officially supported by PS4.