Abstract: IPTV-based systems offer acquisition and distribution of content from numerous channels with protected end-to-end conditional access. In adopting IPTV-based systems for seamless transport of the content to their subscribers' set-top boxes, service providers would need a transport architecture that accommodates their existing infrastructure. In the spectrum of service providers some have no physical infrastructure at all and some have the entire suite of infrastructure and services. Therefore, the present invention provides a new transport architecture that can accommodate the spectrum of service providers, including tier-1, tier-2 and tier-3 service providers. For this purpose, the transport architecture includes double-layer encryption and bulk decryption.