Cracking satelite using regular TV card (Score 1)

There already exists some software that decodes some protected satelite channels using a regular Hauptpage TV card. Does that work by (ab)using the Hauptpage to only pick up the signal and then do all the processing *in software* (similar to the USRP in the article) rather than using the Hauptpage hardware?

If so, that would mean were already able to do TV decoding in software for years!