A beginners guide to getting decent stereo sound from your satellite receiver.

Please note, this page applies to digital receivers as much as analogue boxes.

Its all very well getting your satellite receiver working correctly, but the speakers on most TV's dont do justice to the stereo output available from some channels. With a bit of simple tinkering round the back of the satellite receiver, its easy to connect your satellite receiver to your hi-fi, and get decent stereo output from those channels that broadcast in stereo.

The easiest way to get this working is to use the phono sockets (also known as RCA sockets).

Typical satellite receiver rear panel layouts:

Pace MSS 100

Pace MSS 261

You can see 3 SCART sockets on these receivers. There are also 2 circular phono outputs on each receiver. These are the red and white components close to the centre of each picture. These are the outputs we are interested in.

Most decent stereos these days have some sort of audio input on them - often phono sockets similar to the ones on the back of the satellite receivers. If your stereo has these sockets, then all you need is a phono cable of a suitable length:

OK, it will need to be a little longer than the one in the picture above.... but connect red to red, and white to white. You need to connect them red-red, white-white because each lead carries one of the two audio channels. (It wont actually do any harm if you get one set of the leads round the wrong way, but you will get the stereo effect round the wrong way once you put the hi-fi on!).

You can get phono leads for a few pounds from most high street retailers which sell electrical equipment. If you need long audio patch cables, then you might want to use a specialist audio dealer. If you are handy with a soldering iron, then the cables are easy to make up yourself if you can find somewhere to sell you the plugs.

Switch your hi-fi on, and you will need to select the "Aux" input (sometimes labelled "Video" or similar). With a bit of luck you will get glorious stereo from your hi-fi speakers.

If your receiver doesn't have phono outputs, then use one of the SCART sockets if you aren't using them for anything else. Make sure you use the TV or video scart socket - not a decoder socket. A SCART - phono connector will look something like the picture below:

This particular SCART - phono connector looks very complicated, but dont worry. Ignore the yellow leads for our purposes - they carry video signals. The top 2 phono plugs are labelled "AUDIO OUT", and the 4th and 5th leads down are labelled "AUDIO IN". We want the "AUDIO OUT" leads. Tape any unused leads out of the way.

If your stereo unit has different audio inputs, then you will need to buy a cable with the appropriate combination of plugs for your satellite receiver - hi-fi sockets.

The phono outputs from satellite receivers can be used in other ways too. Ive currently got a wireless headphones base unit connected to my Echostar satellite receiver, and as Im setting this page up on a wet and stormy night in October 2002 here in the Scottish Borders, I've got my wireless headphones on, and I'm listening to the Radio Caroline signals coming from the Astra1's at 19E in glorious digital  :-)  (Up to date details for tuning the digital Caroline signals can be found on my DigitalSatUK site).

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