This was the nagravision encryption mentionned at the end of the article.

Old "decodeur pirates" wouldn't work past 1995. They were standalone and didn't require a PC.

After that, you had to use a tv card (mine was PCI) with a "compatible" chip like BT848 if memory serves. Some plugins for tv applications existed to bruteforce the key every month (deschtroumpfer used to be a keyword to find such plugin).