How To Split the Screen on a Vizio TV

When the first Vizio TV sets hit the market in the early 2000s, they were noted for their competitive price, quality, and the highly sought-after picture-in-picture (PIP) feature. Thanks to this feature, viewers could watch two TV programs at the same time and choose the main audio with a press of the button.

Some more recent Vizio models don’t include this feature. The reason is simple – to be able to reproduce two images at once, a TV set would have to have two built-in tuners. Not only does this add to the overall manufacturing cost but it also makes the TV slightly bulkier. In the era of affordable, super-flat HD TVs, this isn’t a viable option. However, if you have an older Vizio LCD TV, you can still use PIP.

In this article, you will learn how to do this.

Enabling PIP on Your Vizio TV

If you want to watch the latest episode of your favorite TV show on your big-screen Vizio TV but don’t want to miss the local news coverage of an important event, you can watch them both simultaneously using the PIP feature. To activate the picture-in-picture mode, here’s what you need to do:

1. Turn on your TV set and switch to the channel you want to watch in the main window.
2. Now press the Menu button on your remote control.
3. In the “Parental Controls” menu, you need to select “Off” next to “Rating Enable” for the feature to work. Once that’s done, press the OK button on your remote to confirm your selection.
4. Press the Menu button once again to bring up the Picture menu.
5. Use the Up and Down arrow buttons to navigate to “Setup” and then press OK to enter.
6. Navigate to “PIP” (which is short for picture-in-picture) and press OK to enter.
7. Use your remote to choose the input source for the sub-picture, which will appear as a small window in the corner of your screen. You can choose “TV” if you want to watch another TV channel, “HDMI 1” if you want to connect your TV to your computer screen, or “Component 1” if, for example, you want to watch a movie from your Blu-ray player or stream one from Netflix. Once you’ve selected the input source, press OK to confirm your choice.
8. In the next window, choose the size of the sub-screen by using the Up and Down arrows on the remote. Depending on your preference, you can go for “Small”, “Medium”, or “Large”. Press OK once done.
   
9. Now you just have to choose which of the two screens’ audio you want to hear. Select either “Main Screen” or “Sub-Screen” and then press OK on your remote to confirm.

That’s it – you should now be able to watch video from two sources at the same time.

Managing PIP with Remote Shortcuts

If at any moment you wish to switch either the main channel or the sub-channel, or you want to change the audio source, you don’t have to enter the menu to do that. You can just use shortcuts on your remote control. Here are all the things you can do using the commands on your Vizio TV remote:

1. PIP/A activates and deactivates the PIP feature whenever you (don’t) want to use it.
2. CH/D allows you to switch the channel displayed in the sub-screen. For the main screen, simply use the standard Channel “+” and “-“ buttons.
3. Size/B changes the size of the sub-screen by cycling through the three available options.
4. Audio/FF switches the audio from the main screen to the sub-screen and vice versa. Of course, for this option to work, you need to have the PIP mode activated.

Enabling POP on Your Vizio TV

In addition to picture-to-picture, some Vizio TVs also have a built-in picture-outside-picture (POP) feature. As the name suggests, rather than having one small screen obscuring part of the large screen, you will see two pictures side by side without any overlap. You also won’t have control over their size.

To activate this feature, repeat the steps 1-5 from the previous section, and then do the following:

1. Select “POP” in the Picture menu and press OK on your remote to confirm.
2. Repeat Step 7 from the previous section to choose the input source for the second screen. Again, you can choose between several different sources. Once done, press OK to confirm.
3. Since you have no control over the size or position of the two screens (they will be positioned side-by-side), all you can do is press the Exit button on your remote.
4. Use the Left and Right arrow buttons to change the main audio source while watching.

Over to You

Do you use the PIP or POP mode on your Vizio TV? If so, what do you most often use them for? Tell us more in the comments section below.