Miracast Display, the Wi-Fi Alliance's answer to Apple's AirPlay streaming protocol, looks poised to gain support from major industry players like Sony, Samsung, and LG in the coming months. Like Samsung did with the Galaxy S III, Google has already embraced the technology with its latest Nexus devices and now recently-filed certifications detail a number of yet-to-be-announced products that will support streaming between devices. As we've reported previously, Samsung will be incorporating Miracast directly into at least one of its upcoming TVs with the Echo-P Series . If such adoption were to become widespread among television manufacturers, it could prove markedly more convenient than AirPlay, which carries the requirement of a $99 Apple TV to beam content to your big screen.

And if you're not too keen on buying a new TV in the near term, there should be plenty of dongles to bring Miracast support to existing sets. Both Sony and LG have been given the green light to produce such add-ons, though the certification document offers up few specifics as to other functionality we can expect. Instead they're blandly listed as "LGE Media Dongle" in the case of LG and "USB Wireless Adapter Module" for Sony. Unfortunately the documentation doesn't provide any timetable as to when we'll see these Miracast-enabled products reach market, though we could be in for a significant showing at CES. If Apple wants to maintain a sizable presence in the home theater segment, it may want to upgrade the Apple TV to something more than a "hobby" sooner than later.