The application has been updated with lots of bug fixes and improvements

May 25, 2014 19:53 GMT  ·  By

It's unclear when exactly the Xbox Video application for Windows Phone became so unstable, but the truth is that users can't rely on the software to run their videos.

Microsoft has tried to fix the application numerous times, but it appears that it is far from being repaired as most users continue to report that they have many issues with Xbox Video.

The good news is that Microsoft's engineers continue to work on enhancing users' experience with Xbox Video by adding new features, bug fixes and improvements through regular updates.

Xbox Video is likely to receive at least one update per month, but this is the second update that the application gets during May.

Unfortunately, even after this update, the application still crashes randomly or doesn't show the videos stored on the smartphone. When none of these issues appear, the application is just terribly slow and almost unusable.

Anyway, let's see what Microsoft claims that it included in the latest update for Xbox Video for Windows Phone devices. Well, first of all, the update is said to bring multiple stability and localization fixes.

According to Microsoft, the update should fix an issue that many users mentioned in store reviews where the app would stop immediately after it was launched after an upgrade from Windows Phone 8.0.

The bad news is that this issue has been has been difficult for Microsoft to reproduce, so it had to add hooks that would help it understand why this problem occurs. This is likely an issue that the company will continue to address in future updates.

Another change mentioned by Microsoft is the improvement of error notifications when a rental has expired. The update is also supposed to fix a problem with playing downloaded movies while offline.

Several localization issues have been fixed as well, along with a problem where Xbox Video’s collections showed blank content after an upgrade or relaunch.

Sadly, some of the bugs that have been confirmed to have fixes in this update continue to affect the application on Windows Phone 8.1 devices.

Hopefully, the next update will finally fix some of these issues. Speaking of which, Microsoft has also announced some of the new features and improvements that Xbox Video will receive in the next update.

First of all, Microsoft plans to add support for Bookmarking and HD playback. Transparent Tile and Kid's Corners support will be included as well.

You can now download Xbox Video for Windows Phone for free via Windows Phone Store. The application should be fully compatible with all devices powered by Windows Phone 8 and up.