I know IPTV has been around for quite a while but I never really understood how it really works.

Well, a lot of services over here offer channels that you usually need to pay for and I know there are some ways of going around the restraints by doing cardsharing, for instance.

Anyways I can't imagine how a single service can offer so many (encrypted) channels.

I am really interested in the technical part of it, how do they do it? Do they build a huge cardsharing network and use IPTV afterwards for distribution?

Don't know if this is the correct place to post this but would appreciate some thoughts on this.

Thanks!