Yes, the team providing technical support for the STB (the Wicebox) was well aware of the fact that you could watch the streams using VLC player. Right at the start though (over a year ago) they told me that that would not work later once the streams were encrypted.
Right enough, around 3 months ago VLC stopped working for IPTV. I verified using the Wicebox that the IP address and ports have not changed at all. I spoke to them again a few days ago, they have now confirmed the streams are now encrypted and you can only view them using the Wicebox. As Sushubh said, you can still get the raw data on your PC, but without the ability to decrypt it, it's useless. So this era is now over, at least in Pune, unless someone can crack the encryption...