Sony: YouTube 3D coming within a year

    A Sony exec revealed that YouTube would be part of Sony's upcoming 3D offering.

    Mick Hocking, a studio exec at Sony, last week was drumming up support for Sony PlayStation's future capability to game in 3D when he let loose this little tidbit:

    YouTube will be supporting 3D content over the next 12 months as well - and you'll be able to watch that on the PlayStation 3. And as you start taking 3D pictures of your family or 3D camcorder movies, you can play those back on PS3, too.

    Obviously, people who want to enjoy 3D content will need to buy all new hardware that supports 3D, all of which Sony plans to sell you. To watch YouTube, in 3D for example, you'll need a 3D display and a HDMI 1.4 compliant video card. you'll also need a TV or computer OS that supports 3D.

    A YouTube 3D gallery already exists here. You can find existing 3D YouTubes by seaching for yt3d:enable=true (thanks) and, if your hardware supports 3d, you can watch YouTube in 3D now. But there is no consolidated 3D YouTube protocol.

    Sony (SNE) is also one of a few Google (GOOG) manufacturing partners on GoogleTV (Logitech being the other), so it would not be surprising to see 3D built into Sony's GoogleTV offering, which debuts later this year. It will also be interesting to see how quickly these interfaces make their way to mobile devices.