When buying a monitor or even a television, in many cases the manufacturer tells us that it is compatible with PiP technology , but with the acronyms it will most likely sound like Chinese to you, that you do not know what it is and that therefore you do not use it for the simple fact that you do not know you have it. In this article we are going to tell you what PiP technology in monitors consists of and what it can do for you to make your life easier.
Actually, when looking at the technical characteristics of a product (be it a monitor or any other) there are many acronyms and abbreviations that manufacturers use, so either you bother to find what they are exactly or you have already done it in the past and that’s why you know them, because if not, they will be overlooked and you could have a product that can do a lot for you without you knowing. This is precisely the case with PiP technology.
What is PiP (Picture in Picture) technology
PiP is of course Picture in Picture in English, or translated into Spanish, picture in picture . As its name suggests, what it allows is precisely that: when a monitor has multiple video inputs , it allows you to use both simultaneously and insert one image into another. In other words, with PiP you necessarily have a main image that occupies the entire screen and a secondary image that occupies a small box within the main one; A simile would be when you are watching a streamer play live and you see the game as the main one and in a small box the person himself.
As a general rule, if a monitor is compatible with PiP technology, it will be configurable, so that we can choose both the position of the frame with the secondary image and its size, although it is true that with respect to the latter, we usually cannot fully customize it but simply select if we want small, medium, large size, etc.
We repeat the fact that for this to work, two video sources with the same monitor are necessary, and this is important to take into account for the next two sections that we are going to talk about next.
And what about the sound?
A reasonable question that can arise when using the PiP mode of a monitor is that, if the monitor has built-in speakers (as it can be in the case of a TV as well), from which of the two video sources will the sound be heard? Will they mix?
The answer is very simple: from the video source of your choice, but never both at the same time. Due to the existing hardware and video connections and as you may well know, for example an HDMI cable is capable of carrying a video and audio signal at the same time, and when configuring the PiP mode on the monitor you must necessarily select one or the other video source as main. There are monitors that do not allow you to choose and use the audio from the main video source, but there are others that allow you to select the audio from the secondary if you want.
In short, as we are talking about digital audio and video, we must choose the audio from one or another video source, but never both at the same time.
What can you use PiP technology for?
We could really say that this technology is not exactly “necessary” as such, but it can come in handy for many things, such as:
- See the mobile image on the screen while you work on the PC.
- Watch a TV signal on the monitor while using the rest of the screen to work.
- Observe a recording from a camera in a small box while taking notes on the main screen.
- While playing the console on the main screen, you can see the image of your PC recording in PiP.
The possibilities are really quite great, always bearing in mind that you must have two independent video signals by necessity, and by this we mean that it would be useless if, for example, you connected the HDMI output and a DisplayPort of the same to your monitor. graphics card, since the image would be the same and, in fact, the computer would detect it so (the monitor would also do it).
