Connecting the Sky receiver: Here’s how

If you take out a subscription to Sky, you can request a Sky Q receiver from the pay TV provider. Here we tell you how to connect it to your television, beamer or home cinema system.

By Sebastian Weber

At best, subscribers to the pay-TV provider Sky use their Sky Q receiver to watch TV. This is the only way to optimally use the Sky channels, since the films and series are not available on demand on the receivers of providers such as Vodafone. In the following we will tell you how to connect the receiver to your TV set or projector.

How do you connect the Sky Q receiver?

The Sky receiver package includes everything you need to connect – from the cables to the smart card. As soon as you have unpacked everything, you first insert the smart card on the back of the receiver. The chip must point downwards, an arrow shows the correct direction.

In the next step you connect the antenna cable to the corresponding connection. The Sky Q receiver is available for both satellite and cable reception, the procedure is the same for both variants.

Before you connect the receiver to the power supply, connect it to the television using the supplied HDMI cable. Then it’s the turn of the power supply. If the receiver has power, a welcome screen will appear on your TV set after a short wait. From here you simply follow the instructions that the receiver shows you.

If you want to connect the Sky receiver to the Internet, you can do this using a network cable. To do this, connect the device to your router via the Ethernet port on the back. Alternatively, you can configure a WLAN connection in the settings after the initial installation.

An existing internet connection is required for the Sky Q receiver to access content on demand and use apps such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+.

How do you connect the Sky Q receiver to your home cinema system?

The procedure described above reflects the basic connection options. If you want to operate the Sky receiver via a home cinema system, one step changes: the connection of the HDMI cable.

In this case, do not connect the receiver’s HDMI cable directly to the television. Instead, you plug it into the audio receiver of your home theater system, say in slot number one. Then connect the audio receiver with another HDMI cable via its output to an HDMI input of your TV set.

Now both picture and sound signal go from the Sky receiver via the home cinema system to the television. In this way, your sound system can play back films and series in surround sound, while your television is processing the image signal.

Note: If you have booked the Sky UHD package and received the appropriate Sky receiver, but the receiver of your home cinema system is not 4K-capable, the method described will not work.

In this case, your TV remains connected directly to the Sky receiver via the HDMI cable so that the picture arrives in full resolution. You connect the home cinema system using an optical audio cable, which you plug into the SPDIF connection on the back of the Sky receiver and into that of your audio receiver.

How can you connect a Sky receiver to a projector?

You connect a beamer just like a television set. Connect the Sky receiver to the projector using an HDMI cable.

If you use a home cinema system, you also proceed as described above. Note the restrictions described if your projector supports 4K resolution and your audio receiver does not.

Which hard drive can you connect to the Sky receiver?

full screen

Current Sky-Q receivers do not allow the connection of an additional hard drive.

Image: © TURN ON 2017

The current Sky Q receiver has USB ports on the back. However, these are not intended for connecting external hard drives, so you cannot use additional storage with the receiver.

Sky justifies this with existing license agreements and the associated restrictions.

Therefore, you have to make do with the internal hard drive already installed in the Sky receiver, which has a capacity of one terabyte. According to Sky, this is enough for up to 300 hours of recordings.

summary

• The Sky receiver comes with all the basic cables you need to connect the device.
• To use the Internet, you can choose between WLAN and a wired network connection.
• When operating through a home theater system, you may need to be mindful of which devices are 4K capable and which are not.