I'm not sure I can help you with your satellite problems, but regarding the poor sound quality of your MP3 files:

What bitrate are they playing at? Songs with low bitrates tend to be low quality, and sound tin-canny. If your file is recorded at 128, then you should hear close to CD quality, and your MP3 files will play about one minute of music for every megabyte long they are. Make sure you are downloading files with a bitrate of at least 128 if you are concerned about sound quality.

Avi