On November 15, at 0001 hrs, I was lucky enough to purchase a PlayStation 4 at Amazon.com. After a few minutes, all the available units were gone. I had the package delivered overnight.
The package was light and seemed smaller than the original PlayStation 3 package. I immediately opened it to see if everything was in order.
Connecting the PS4 to the TV was a breeze. Luckily, it also came with an HDMI cable since I didn’t have an extra one lying around. I held my breath and turned it on, hoping that the unit I got had no problems. The unit started without any problems and a nice blue light turned on. The DUALSHOCK 4 controller also had a light turned on.
The boot sequence was quick enough and I went through the setup process without any problems. After all was done, it prompted me to download an update for the firmware. The process was okay and I had it up and running in no time.
The previous afternoon, I had purchased the game “Killzone: Shadow Fall” for the PS4. I also bought the PS4 Eye Camera which costs U.S. $ 59.99. Plugging the camera to the PS4’s auxiliary port was simple and I mounted it on top of the TV. Included in the PS4 was an application called “The Playroom”. Before I could use it, I had to calibrate the camera. Calibration required me to move the coffee table away to have a clear space between me and the TV.
Notice that the power and eject symbols are quite small. The buttons are subtly located at the front of the unit. The top button is the power button and the bottom one is the eject button. There are two USB 3.0 ports in front which can be used to charge the DUALSHOCK controllers.
The hard drive installed on the PS4 is a 2.5″ 500 GB 5400 RPM hard drive. It can be replaced by opening the top part of the case. You can find tutorials on how to do this in YouTube. So far, I’ve seen one video where the hard drive was replaced with a 1.5 TB hard drive.
The optical disc player is a front-loading unit. The PS4 supports blu-ray discs and DVD. As of this time, CDs are not supported. I’m not sure if this is just a software issue. Discs can be ejected either via the menu or the eject button.
The PS4 supports recording 15 minutes of gameplay and capturing screenshots. You can even stream your gameplay to Twitch.TV if you want. The quality of the stream is okay but a video capture card probably can deliver better resolution and frame rate. Unfortunately, the PS4 does not directly support the use of external video capture devices, although a few people have successfully streamed using an external device with some hardware workaround.
A few more pictures of the PS4 are posted below:
