PS4: New Media Player, 20th Anniversary Controller, White Headset

In amongst all the new game announces from yesterday’s E3 conferences, Sony have finally snuck out their new media player that will allow you to play music, videos and view photos on your console. You can either connect to a DLNA media server (like your home computer) and stream across your network, or run files off a USB drive.

When using a USB drive, you’ll need to ensure that all videos and photos are in a folder rather than the drive’s root, while music must be in folder called Music.

You can play games while playing music through your PC – the music volume will be automatically balanced with the game sound. When streaming on Twitch or other services the game sound will be excluded, so you’ll only broadcast your mic output and the game audio. Catching yourself singing along to music that no one else can hear? So awkward. Similarly, if you capture a segment of video, your music will also be excluded.

Supported file formats:

Bearing in mind that the PS4 does use Cinavia copy protection, here are the file formats supported by the media player.

Video

MKV
Visual: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level4.2
Audio: MP3, AAC LC, AC-3 (Dolby Digital)
AVI
Visual: MPEG4 ASP, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level4.2
Audio: MP3, AAC LC, AC-3 (Dolby Digital)
MP4
Visual: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level4.2
Audio: AAC LC, AC-3 (Dolby Digital)
MPEG-2 TS
Visual: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level4.2, MPEG2 Visual
Audio: MP2 (MPEG2 Audio Layer 2), AAC LC, AC-3(Dolby Digital)
AVCHD: (.m2ts, .mts)

Photo

JPEG (based on DCF 2.0/Exif 2.21)
BMP
PNG

Music

MP3
AAC (M4A)

Sony also confirmed that their 20th anniversary DualShock 4 controller in original PlayStation grey will be launching as a standalone limited edition product in September 2015. It has a recommended retail price of €64.

Finally, the white version of their wireless stereo headset will be available in Europe from 16th September. More inf on the PlayStation Blog.