DJI has set a launch event for Tuesday, September 1 at 20:00 GMT+8, which lands at 8 a.m. Eastern, and the teaser shows a small metal box with two fold-up antennas lit from above. Retail packaging photographed by a leaker gives it a name. DJI SDR Transmission 2 Combo.
The company’s Taiwan account posted the teaser with the Chinese tagline 小有實力, 大陣從容, translated as “Small in strength, big in composure.” In the video version, the chassis carries a red RX button beside a blue TX button, with an HDMI port along the top edge. That points to one unit that switches between transmitting and receiving, instead of the separate transmitter and receiver DJI has sold since 2024.
DroneXL covered the first SDR Transmission teaser cycle in July 2024, five days ahead of launch, down to the FCC identifier already sitting in the agency’s database. That filing is the piece that cannot happen again. The Federal Communications Commission added DJI’s communications equipment to its Covered List in December 2025, and listed equipment cannot receive the authorization a new model needs to be imported or sold in the United States.
Leaked Packaging Names A TX/RX Switchable Combo
Leaker Igor Bogdanov photographed a retail box reading DJI SDR Transmission 2 Combo, with TX/RX SWITCHABLE printed across the bottom in English and Chinese. Two identical units sit on the front, each with fold-up antennas and a square status display. DJI has confirmed none of it.
DJI’s own teaser video, posted by its Taiwan account, gives a date and a tagline and nothing else. Bogdanov published the box shot separately, and he has a long record with DJI packaging leaks, including the Osmo Pocket 4 retail box and the Neo 2.
The display render on the right-hand unit reads 4K 60fps HDR. The current SDR Transmission tops out at 1080p60, so if that readout survives into shipping hardware it is the headline change, and a packaging mockup is exactly the kind of artwork that gets finalized before firmware does. One body doing both jobs also changes the buying math. Today a crew needs a transmitter and a receiver as separate SKUs, and a spare of the wrong one is a paperweight.
DJI Cleared The First SDR Transmission Through The FCC Before Launch
An FCC filing for DJI’s original SDR transmitter, ID 2ANDR-TX53209, was submitted by SZ DJI Osmo Technology Co., Ltd. on June 14, 2024. The product launched roughly five weeks later, on July 17, at $549 for the transmitter and receiver together.
Those numbers are worth holding onto. The 2024 system sends 1080p60 at up to 20 Mbps with 35 ms of latency once camera and screen are excluded, reaches 10,000 feet (3 kilometers) under FCC power limits, and weighs 145 grams with antennas. Standalone units ran $309 each. It was built for small crews who could not spend thousands on a Teradek-class link.
The regulatory path was ordinary then. DJI filed, the lab tested, the grant issued, the product shipped, and we wrote it up from the leaks before DJI said a word. The Lito series was among the last to run that sequence, reaching an April 2026 launch on filings submitted before the December deadline closed.
The Covered List Reaches DJI Radios, Not Only DJI Drones
The FCC’s December 22, 2025 action did two things. It added all foreign-produced drones and drone critical components to the Covered List. For DJI and Autel specifically, it went further and covered all communications and video surveillance equipment from both companies.
That second half is what catches a cinema video link. An SDR transmitter is a radio that moves a picture from a camera to a monitor, which reads as communications equipment on its face. DJI argues otherwise. Its petition for reconsideration, which the Commission’s procedural notice records as filed on January 21, 2026, asks the FCC to confirm that the listing cannot reach products falling outside the statutory definition of equipment essential to advanced communications service, a category DJI says excludes most of its catalog. The company put $1.56 billion on that table in April, roughly $860 million of it tied to twenty-five models slated for release in 2026.
Whether a 145-gram monitor link qualifies as equipment essential to advanced communications service is the precise question DJI put to the Commission in January, and the Commission has not answered it. The reconsideration record closed to replies on May 11. DJI’s parallel Ninth Circuit petition, case 26-1029, sits in abeyance waiting for that same answer, with its opening brief due November 2.
Three Federal Deadlines Land On Consecutive Days In September
DJI’s event falls on September 1. The FCC’s comment window on Public Notice DA 26-758, which proposes pulling import and marketing clearance from foreign drones the agency already approved, closes September 2. Section 232 tariffs on imported drones and components take effect September 3.
The tariff annexes are written around unmanned aircraft and their components, and no DJI cinema accessory is named in them. The Covered List already does that work on the DJI-specific side. The White House proclamation signed August 13 sets 100% on drones above 55 pounds (25 kilograms) and on any drone carrying a thermal imager, with 25% on nearly everything else American pilots fly.
American crews keep what they already own. The 2024 SDR Transmission was authorized before the listing, so remaining US stock stays legal to sell and buy, and the FCC has waived the firmware cutoff for pre-listing equipment through at least January 1, 2029. New models are the casualty, and the only route left for a determined buyer is a grey-market import with no US warranty and no support. Competitors are moving into that space with the paperwork DJI cannot get, and HOVERAir’s VERSA cleared the FCC for US sale this month while DJI stayed blocked.
DroneXL’s Take
This is what the ban looks like once it stops being about drones. A 145-gram box that sends a picture to a director’s monitor is not an airspace threat and not a surveillance platform. It got swept up because DJI made it and it has an antenna. American cinematographers on small productions were the people the first SDR Transmission was priced for, and they are the people who lose a $549 option they can no longer legally buy.
The security case is not empty, and I want to be fair about that. The Department of War told the FCC in April that it participated in the interagency body behind the determination and transmitted a classified annex to Congress, which is a real answer to DJI’s claim that no qualifying agency ever acted.
It arrived on April 3. The listing took effect December 22, and the statute gave the department thirty days from the determination to file that report. Ten weeks late, months after the deprivation, is not a security judgment supporting a decision. It is a decision looking for one. I think the calendar drove December 22, and everything filed since has been an effort to build the file that should have existed first.
If the Ninth Circuit reaches the merits on scope when briefing opens November 2, rather than sending the whole thing back to the Commission, the question of whether a video transmitter counts as equipment essential to advanced communications service gets a judicial answer instead of an agency one, and that answer reaches every DJI product with a radio inside it. Until then, DJI will keep launching hardware on Shenzhen time that Americans can watch and cannot buy.
Sources: DJI Taiwan, Igor Bogdanov (@Quadro_News), FCC Public Notice DA 26-223, FCC Fact Sheet, December 22, 2025, Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation, White House Fact Sheet, August 13, 2026, CineD, DJI
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.
