The PS4 finally gets a media player app
It’s free, it's available now, and it’s compatible with some interesting formats
The PlayStation 4‘s lack of media player functionality has been something of an embarrassment for Sony – this is the company, after all, that put a DVD player inside the PS2 and made the PS3 a full-on AV powerhouse, so why did its latest, greatest console not have the ability to play MP3 music or MP4 videos?
Well, now it does.
Sony quietly released a media player app for the PS4 yesterday, able to play files either from a connected USB device or a home server (via your home network). And the video formats it’s compatible with are quite impressive.
The media player can play AVIs and MP4s, but we reckon a lot of you will find its compatibility with MKV files more interesting. Torrented – and pirated – HD movies and TV shows are often delivered in MKV, and with the PS3 these files required conversion in order to play, but that shouldn’t be the case here. Sony, it seems, is essentially making it easier to watch illegal video files, which is perhaps a curious move from a company that owns one of the world’s biggest movie studios.
On the photo front, the media player is compatible with JPEG, BMP and PNG files, while music files in either MP3 or AAC can be played.
The app is available to download right now. Sony may have taken its sweet time in releasing a media player, but on paper at least this one has the potential to add a lot of value to the PS4.
[Source: PlayStation Blog]
Sam Kieldsen
Contributor 
