NEW YORK: Microsoft has announced that a new unified Store is now rolling out to Windows Insiders using the new operating system. This store will not only feature ‘universal’ Windows apps that work across devices like laptops and phones, will also offer music, movie, and TV show content in one place.
Formerly, with the Xbox Music and Xbox Video apps, users had two separate libraries and stores for their audio and visual content. These will be unified in Windows 10 – if you recall, the company had announced the Xbox Music and Video apps were being rebranded as Music and Video apps in the new OS, and preview versions of the apps were released last month.
While the unified Store Beta already featured a Movies & TV section with last month’s Windows 10 Technical Preview release, the section was empty. Now, forwarding the unified Store experience, the section has been activated for Windows Insiders running the latest build of the preview. Users will now be able to browse and search for videos, rent or purchase movies & TV shows, and play them in the Video Preview app. Users of the Xbox Video app will also see their entire collections in the Video Preview app as well.
With the new Store beta app that includes the updated Movies & TV section, users will be able to purchase and access content across their Windows 10-based devices.
Microsoft in its blog post introducing the revamped Store beta app, said, “The experience you will see today is unfinished and we have a lot more work to do. For example – you won’t see movie or TV details like cast and crew and you’ll only be able to stream video content right now. But don’t worry – offline download capability will be coming!”
The new Movies & TV section of the Store beta can be accessed by US, Canada, Mexico, Austria, Belgium (only movies – no TV content), Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, and New Zealand users.
While the video section has gone live, Microsoft promises the Music page will go live in the coming weeks.
