The practical transmission range of an electrical cable can be extended by converting between electrical and optical signals using an HDMI-optical converter that receives an SFP+ optics transceiver. A pair of SFP+-based HDMI adapters/extenders can connect to a pair of HDMI cables, where one of the HDMI cables is connected to an HDMI Source and one of the HDMI cables is connected to an HDMI Sink. Each of the SFP+-based HDMI cable extenders can terminate with an SFP+ port to house a hot pluggable SFP+ transceiver. The apparatus can transmit 10 G video data to the distance that is supported by the SFP+ product.