German TV in Switzerland: ARD, ZDF, ORF, RTL and the Swiss feeds

People who search for "German IPTV" usually want German-language channels delivered over the internet. In Switzerland the licensed routes are the ones below: Zattoo, Salt's German package and the base plans of Swisscom and Sunrise. IPTV as a technology is legal; what counts is whether the service holds the rights to the channels it sells, and IPTV illegal or legal in Switzerland? explains this with the statute references.

An offer that promises every German channel for a flat fee calls for a different kind of check. How to test any provider is set out in IPTV Switzerland: licensed providers compared and in IPTV scams in Switzerland.

Zattoo's overview lists Das Erste, ZDF, ZDFneo, ZDFinfo, 3sat, ARTE, ARD-alpha, tagesschau24 and Phoenix from Germany, ORF 1 and ORF 2 from Austria and the commercial Servus TV Österreich, next to Switzerland's own SRF 1, SRF zwei and SRF info. For the broadcasters' on-demand libraries, note that Zattoo's page on use abroad lists the ARD and ZDF media libraries as not available, so check what a service offers before relying on it.

Several German private broadcasters run Swiss feeds, and the names show it: RTL CH, Pro7 Schweiz, Sat.1 Schweiz, Super RTL Schweiz and RTLZWEI CH all appear in the Zattoo overview, alongside VOX, Kabel Eins, WELT, ntv and Spiegel TV. A Swiss feed is the programme of the German channel with a Swiss advertising window, so what you see in the breaks differs from Germany.

Salt sells a German package, which it describes as a selection of movies, series, documentaries and entertainment. It is an add-on to an existing Salt TV subscription, ordered through the Salt TV app on the Apple TV box or in a Salt store, and terminable at the end of the month with one month's notice.

Both carry the main German-language Swiss channels as part of the base offers: Swisscom lists 290+ channels in blue TV M and Sunrise 280+ channels, and their channel lists are the place to check specific German channels. The operators do not sell a German-language package in the way they sell Albanian or Portuguese ones, so for a German-only selection the simpler route is the base plan plus a streaming service.

For German-language channels beyond SRF:

Rights explain the gaps: a German series can be on the public channels in Germany and missing in Switzerland, or the other way round. The shortest route to German-language films and series is to treat the TV service as the live layer and add a streaming subscription for series, and TV costs in Switzerland shows how to add up the result.

See also English TV in Switzerland, Foreign-language TV and Zattoo Free, Premium, Ultimate. For the whole picture, start from IPTV Switzerland: licensed providers compared.

Also useful: Italian TV in Switzerland and French TV in Switzerland.