You remember the old Sony Trinitron or those massive Magnavox consoles. There was a specific button on the remote that felt like magic. You’d press it, and a tiny window would pop up in the corner of the screen, letting you watch the pre-game show while the news finished up. It was called picture in picture tv, and for a decade, it was the ultimate status symbol of the living room.
Then, suddenly, it wasn't.
If you go out today and buy a top-tier OLED or a 98-inch 8K beast, there is a very high chance you won't find a dedicated "PIP" button on the remote. It’s bizarre. We have more processing power in our remote controls than we had in the entire televisions of 1995, yet the ability to watch two things at once has become a labyrinth of menus and workarounds. Honestly, it’s a bit of a step backward for multitasking fans.
The Technical Death of the Dual Tuner
So, why did picture in picture tv basically vanish from the mainstream? It comes down to hardware costs and the way we consume signals now.
Back in the analog days, your TV had a tuner that grabbed a signal from the wall. To do PIP, a manufacturer had to put two tuners inside the box. One for the big picture, one for the small one. It was expensive, but it worked flawlessly because all the processing happened inside the chassis.
When we switched to digital (ATSC), things got complicated. HD signals require immense processing power to decode. Adding a second digital tuner and a second decoder chip added $50 to $100 to the manufacturing cost. In a race to the bottom where brands like Vizio and TCL were slashing prices to win the Walmart shelves, PIP was the first "luxury" feature to get the axe.
Most people didn't complain. We started looking at our phones during commercials anyway.
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The HDMI Handshake Headache
There’s another culprit: HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection). This is the digital "handshake" that happens between your Roku, cable box, or PlayStation and your TV. It’s designed to stop piracy, but it hates picture in picture tv.
Most TVs aren't licensed to decrypt two different encrypted HDMI streams simultaneously. If you try to put Netflix in a small window while playing Call of Duty in the big one, the DRM (Digital Rights Management) usually freaks out and gives you a black screen. It’s a legal and software mess that most manufacturers decided just wasn't worth the customer support phone calls.
Modern Workarounds: Who Still Does It Best?
If you're a sports bettor or a news junkie, you still need this. You want the local game on the big screen and the RedZone channel in the corner. You've got options, but they aren't as simple as they used to be.
Samsung’s Multi View is probably the closest thing we have to the glory days. On their Neo QLED and Frame models, you can split the screen or do a classic overlay. But even Samsung has limits. You can usually do one "live" source (like HDMI) and one "app" source (like YouTube). You rarely get to do two HDMI inputs at once because of those hardware limitations I mentioned earlier.
LG has a version called Multi-View on the C3 and C4 OLED series. It’s okay. It’s a bit clunky to navigate through the WebOS menus. You end up clicking through three sub-menus just to get the window up, by which time the commercial break you were trying to avoid is already over.
Then there is the Sony "Twin Picture" mode. Sony used to be the king of this, but they’ve largely phased it out in recent Android TV / Google TV builds. They’ll tell you it’s because of "low user engagement," but we know it’s about saving on those processing cycles.
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The "Pro" Way: Using Multiviewers and HDMI Processors
If you are serious about picture in picture tv, you stop relying on the TV software. You buy an external HDMI Multiviewer.
These are little boxes—brands like OREI or Blackmagic make them—that take four HDMI inputs and mash them into one single signal that your TV sees as a single source. This bypasses the TV’s limitations entirely.
- You can have four 1080p feeds on one 4K screen.
- The TV thinks it’s just showing one movie.
- Zero lag (usually).
- No DRM issues because the box handles the handshakes.
It’s a bit of a "cable nest" behind the dresser, but for a Saturday afternoon of college football, it’s unbeatable. Sports bars have been using this tech for years, and it's finally cheap enough ($60–$150) for a home setup.
Why Gaming Monitors Beat TVs at Their Own Game
It's funny that while living room sets ditched PIP, gaming monitors doubled down. If you buy a 34-inch ultrawide from Dell or LG, it almost certainly has PIP and PBP (Picture-by-Picture).
The use case is different. Gamers want their PC on 80% of the screen and maybe a twitch stream or a walkthrough on the other 20%. Because monitors handle "unencrypted" DisplayPort and HDMI signals from computers more often, they don't run into the same legal roadblocks as a Smart TV trying to juggle HBO and Disney+.
Software-Level PIP: The Mobile Influence
We also have to talk about how the "small screen" influenced the "big screen." iPadOS and Android phones brought PIP back into the zeitgeist. You’re watching a YouTube video, you swipe up to check an email, and the video shrinks to the corner.
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This has trickled back into TV apps. If you use YouTube TV (the subscription service), they launched a "Multiview" feature specifically for sports. You can watch four games at once. But notice the catch: YouTube TV does the processing on their servers, not on your TV. They send you one single video stream that already has the four windows baked in. You can’t choose which four games; they pick the "quad" for you. It’s a clever hack, but it’s not true hardware picture in picture tv.
The Future: Will It Ever Come Back?
With the rise of 8K TVs, the argument for PIP becomes much stronger. On an 8K panel, a "quarter-screen" window is still a full 4K image. The resolution is there. The screen real estate is massive.
The bottleneck remains the "brain" of the TV. As long as TV brands keep using cheap MediaTek chips to save money, we won't see a return to the seamless, one-button PIP of the 1990s. We are currently in an era where TVs are essentially "app launchers" first and "monitors" second.
Actionable Steps for Your Setup
If you’re desperate to get that multi-screen life back, don't just go out and buy a new TV expecting it to be there.
- Check your current manual for "Multi-View" or "Twin Picture." On Samsung, it's often hidden in the "Settings > General" menu rather than the main app bar.
- Look into an HDMI Multiviewer if you have multiple boxes (Apple TV, Fire Stick, Cable). Look for one that supports "Seamless Switching" so you don't get a black screen for three seconds when you toggle audio.
- Explore "Cast" options. Sometimes the easiest way to get PIP is to use your TV’s native "Cast" or "AirPlay" feature to throw a second video from your phone onto the screen while the main HDMI input is running.
- Consider a Gaming Monitor if you're setting up a home office/den. The PIP features there are significantly more robust than what you'll find in the "Living Room" category of electronics.
The dream of watching the game and the movie at the same time isn't dead, it’s just evolved into a "tinkerers" hobby. You can still have your picture in picture tv experience, but you're going to have to work a little harder for it than your dad did.