I ended up brute forcing most of it as I did not really understand what I was doing, but it turns out, with enough time, you get things going.
Wish the pages were still up, I lost that software long ago, and I'm sure my code was garbage (not that its much better today, but at least I can blame Claude..) and fun to read.
The 90's were fun.
I'm guessing it's a latter version?
There were programs that could use a TV capture card and decode it in real time on a 486DX2. They worked pretty well (I felt ok using it because we already had Canal+ but it was on the living room TV and my computer was on the opposite side of the house.)
Still supposedly, the hardest part was finding the strainer in the kitchen without waking everyone in the house.
And the saddest part was discovering that it didn't work.
Later in the 90's, when TV cards became cheap enough I got one for my computer then there were software to decode the signal.
Good ol' civil disobedience. Love it.