Granted, it’s been forever since I last bought a TV, but I remember the first one I bought after college, after I got my first real-world paycheck, was a kickass 32" tube-TV, and oh man that picture-in-picture made me the post popular guy in the apartment complex, especially on NFL Sundays.
Is that even a feature that’s built into TV’s nowadays? If so (in my experience), it sure isn’t being advertised very well.
I think it’s still around. It’s not something I look for but I’m sure I’ve seen it advertised.
Kind of pointless now, isn’t it? If I need to watch two things at once, I’ll either pause and change the channel (everything is pausable these days), or use my smartphone.
Yeah, I guess. It depends on how you watch TV. You need a dual tuner TV to pause and flip channels (you need one for PiP as well.) I suppose if you have designed a dual tuner TV you may as well include PiP.
The below was a randomly chosen model and has picture in picture.
It’s still around, but the proliferation of cable boxes has made it less useful than it was when it was introduced*. To watch two actual live TV channels, one of them has to be available over the air (and you have to have a suitable antenna) or on unencrypted cable (or over some Internet device I guess), and many cable systems are going 100% encrypted now that the law allows it.
*And how many people did find it that useful anyways? I had a TV with it once, and it seemed like a useless sales gimmick. Maybe it was only for sports people.
My cable decoder does its own picture-in-picture thingy (not dependent on the TV). When it appears on screen, it’s a sign that I pressed the PiP button by mistake.
Similarly, YouTube on my phone does picture-in-picture (keeps playing video A in the corner which I’m searching for video B), and it’s mostly because I haven’t found the button to turn it off.
There is no button. You put your thumb (or finger) on the video and swipe it off the edge of the screen.
You mean, now you can get up and walk over to the TV and do that, instead of searching for the pesky remote under the sofa cushions? The 60s are back.
Like, instead of talking to someone on the phone, I can send them a telegram, now called a text.
PIP, whether it’s generated by the TV or the cable box is computationally intensive - you’ve got to decode 2 simultaneous HD streams. So you need more RAM and a processor capable of dual decode, all of which costs money. Given that it’s not that popular a feature, most TV manufacturers and cable box manufacturers have dumped it.
He was talking about swiping the phone screen, not the TV screen.
Same here.
Our cable box handles picture-in-picture as well. It comes in handy when we are trying to follow two sporting events at the same time; other than that, it never gets used.
I use PIP extensively during college football season. I can watch 2 games simultaneously and quickly swap back and forth depending on which one is at a more crucial point, in commercials, at halftime, etc. I can also use the dual tuner to attach another TV (in another room) and watch a different show on each with only 1 shared HD box.