Google+ brings HD to all Hangouts

You’ve been able to use HD video-calling on publicly broadcast Hangouts on Air for a while now, but you haven’t been able for private calls with friends and family, until today.

The news, which comes via an official Google+ post , will be most welcome to anyone in developed markets with sophisticated bandwidth infrastructure. It could be especially useful for journalists looking to do in-depth video interviews with people they don’t have face-to-face access with.

To enable or disable HD on Google+, use the bandwidth slider in the top right corner of your Hangout browser. It’s also worth bearing in mind that HD-quality takes a bit more CPU and bandwidth, around 1.2Mbps on both upload and download. To record in HD, you’ll obviously need a 720p HD camera.