Google adds enhanced video chat to Gmail Labs

Google is working on improving the quality of its video chats, adding a new opt-in feature to Gmail Labs. To get higher resolution video and a bigger video window in your chats, go to labs and enable "video chat enhancements." Google has apparently found a way to enable widescreen mode and pump up the video quality without causing a huge drain on your system resources, which is important in a crowded video chat field that includes a constantly-improving Skype and might soon include Apple's FaceTime.

Enabling video chat enhancements isn't just about the immediate benefits, either. It also automatically activates any future chat enhancements that Google might decide to add, and they promise there will be more on the way. The only catch is that all parties to a video chat have to enable the lab for the features to work.

Tags: gmail, video, video chat, video chat enhancements, VideoChat, VideoChatEnhancements