Also, I guess we traded a ton of coax cable for somewhat more manageable single-mode fiber. :-)
I never fully understood why SDI over fiber remains so niche, e.g. UHD people would rather do four chunky 3G-SDI cables instead of a much cheaper and easier-to-handle fiber cable (when the standards very much do exist). But once your signal is IP, then of course fiber is everywhere and readily available, so there seems to be no real blocker there.
I don't know but is there a maximum compression weight on fiber, because in some of these broadcast centers they've got cable trays of SDI that are so heavy and packed that removing a dead line is a fire hazard (because the friction of pulling the line could cause a fire).
They'd obviously need a lot less and the lines are a lot lighter but maybe folks figured if they could avoid repeating that scenario in their design, it might be a good idea :-P
I never fully understood why SDI over fiber remains so niche, e.g. UHD people would rather do four chunky 3G-SDI cables instead of a much cheaper and easier-to-handle fiber cable (when the standards very much do exist). But once your signal is IP, then of course fiber is everywhere and readily available, so there seems to be no real blocker there.