yeah, I guess tvs and receivers would come with active optical cables to make it simpler, but the main thing is that optical is much cheaper and faster than copper once you get the economies of scale down on the transceivers. 1 terabit over 100km, down a cable thinner than a USB cable, is no problem with the right lasers. Meanwhile, I have interference and patent issues at 0.02tbps on hdmi cables less than a meter long.
Plenty of cheap optical HDMI cables out there, but they have compatibility issues. It would be so much easier with standard mmf mpo or SMF lc cables.
apalrd did review a unique product recently that embeds a mmf transceiver into the existing HDMI for factor, though.
https://youtu.be/1aIK01S5qa4