Fiber Optic Transport of HD/SD-SDI It is becoming increasingly necessary and economically feasible to transport HD/SD-SDI signals over fiber instead of coaxial cable. The reasons are many including increased bandwidth, lower cabling cost, noise immunity and greater transmission distances. Prior to 2006, several standards were used to define how SDI signals were to be transported over fiber. Now, there is one standard to define the many aspects and parameters of the fiber optic interface for the transmission and reception of SDI over fiber. SMPTE 297-2006: This standard defines the fiber optic interface for the transmission and reception of SDI signals at various data rates: 12G, 6G, SMPTE 259M: 143 through 360 Mbps SMPTE 344M: 540 Mbps SMPTE 292: 1.485 and 1.485/1.001 Gbps SMPTE 424M: 2.97 and 2.97/1.001 Gbps SMPTE 297-2006 defines many parameters of the optical interface for both a transmitting and receiving device with a fiber optic interface. The input to a fiber Transmitter can be any one of the SMPTE coaxial-based standards indicated above. On the Receiver, the output will be of the same coaxial interface type of the Transmitter. The significance of the new 297 standard is that it allows for interoperability between fiber optic devices from different manufacturers that comply with the standard.