> The Samsung Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II use a connector that is similar to the original 5-pin MHL-HDMI adapter/dongle, but it uses 11-pins in order to achieve a few functional improvements over the 5-pin design
Both Micro USB and MHL seem to be industry standards - ref Wikipedia. Lot of vendors seem to putting out cheaper Micro USB to MHL adapters - so even if (Micro USB->MHL) may not be a standard it is at least built on two standards and proprietary licensing / approval seems to be unnecessary for vendors.
Also most MHL adapters seem to do 1080p - the Lightning one seems to do 720p badly if we are to believe Apple store reviewers.
The sad thing is that Lightning is even inferior to the Apple 30 pin connector for this use. You get better video out on an iPhone 4S than a brand new iPhone 5, and the connector is $10 less and has a pass thru so you can charge it at the same time.
Exactly. It turned out Apple's Lightning is actually inferior to a standard MicroUSB + MHL.