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Houston Haynes
Houston Haynes

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Achieving Full Screen PBP in 4K, One Person's Journey

Theory vs Practice

It seemed simple. Use a 4K monitor to run multiple computer screens simultaneously. There are dozens of choices for this. Picture by Picture (PBP) is a feature so common you'll scarcely see it in long form in the description. Just the acronym is all that's needed to sell the concept. But not all PBP designs and not all monitor drivers are equal. While it's tempting to call out certain vendors, the half-life of driver implementations (and generations of monitor hardware technology) is so short that this article might be out of date by the time you read it. So consider this in context if you're thinking about running multiple systems into a single display.

Bigger (and Wider) is not always Better

This journey started with my 55 inch 4K TV, which was occasionally pressed into service while working from home. Mostly it served as a proxy for a white board during group working sessions with video feeds and slide/board presentations. Eventually I started using it more generally, but for detailed coding work it created too much eye strain. It is an earlier generation 4K TV and simply wasn't designed for at-arms-length viewing. So when I moved to remote work full-time, I looked for a purpose-built 4K monitor. I also wanted it to handle more than one input simultaneously, so I can work across multiple systems. While researching I quickly set aside the idea of an ultra-wide curved monitor. I'm not looking to frag virtual enemies at 120fps. The work I'm planning focuses more on using my system GPU for small-scale TensorFlow experiments. In fact, one of my early use cases was to set up my personal machine for various machine learning benchmark exercises (in Windows 10 and Ubuntu) while the work notebook handled general office and light-lift development duties. So the use case is fairly simple and straight-forward, or so I thought.

Reading the Fine Print

Here's a photo of the first 4K monitor I bought, with the initial attempt at PBP shown below.

Philips 4K PBP double letter boxing

Needless to say this is not at all what I was expecting. I tried all combinations of display properties, from 1:1 to full width, and nothing made any difference. I contacted the manufacturers technical support team and in few days I received a rather curt response.

Please make sure you are running HDMI 2.0 3840x2160@60hz, turn to page 10 in the user manual, PBP will have bars on the top and bottom.

[cue sad trombone]

So, in effect the customer has to use their psychic powers to know that 10-pages deep into the manual there's a proviso which says that full screen PBP is not possible. At that moment I realized I had not bought a monitor. I had bought a $600 boomerang. At least the product return process worked perfectly, so that feature was fully implemented.

Take Two, this time with Feeling

The second monitor was lighter, used less power, was practically immune to screen burn and was nearly $100 cheaper than my first choice. So I felt lucky in many respects. However the second PBP result was not much better than the first.

ViewSonic 4K PBP letter-boxing

While running full screen the images scaled to the full height of the display area, there was still letter-boxing occurring.

ViewSonic monitor input Full Screen setting

So I sent a message to the second manufacturer's tech support group. And while this team was more polite, the initial response wasn't all that helpful. All of their suggestions simply re-iterated through the combinations of settings I had already tried, to no positive result. We even conducted an over-the-phone session to ensure we were apples-to-apples on the settings and output. It nagged at me that this wasn't something that manufacturers had already solved. Running 1920X2160 side-by-side with two separate monitor inputs seemed (to me, at least) to be a standard use case for a 4K monitor that's capable of handling more than one input at a time. But I resigned myself to switching separately between the two inputs at the full 3840X2160 resolution - toggling between them using the rear panel monitor controls. In truth, it was a nice "problem" to have.

Checking under the (Other) Hood

A week later I received an email from the second tech support team, to reach out via phone and attempt another possible fix. I wasn't hopeful, but once we started chatting it out the idea dawned on me that the computer's video driver might be shaping the output in anticipation of a 16:9 aspect ratio.

NVidia Control Panel settings - Full Screen

Once we checked the NVidia Control Panel, we saw that it was set to format the chosen resolution to "Aspect Ratio". That in effect meant that the driver was letter-boxing the output to the monitor when the resolution was set to a non-16:9 resolution. Once the setting was changed to "Full Screen" then everything fell into place.

ViewSonic 4K with proper PBP configuration

There it was - two separate systems filling right/left sides of the screen, each with their own over/under window arrangement. With a 43" screen, each side could provide two 21" 1080p areas. And it's possible to set up an over/under PBP, so 3840X1080 is also possible. But after confirming that also worked as expected I went back to the left-right arrangement. It is glorious.

[cue angels singing]

I added a USB switch to toggle an external keyboard and mouse between the two systems. Since the work laptop connected to its own VNET, a Synergy-like software solution was not an option. However the physical "non-V KVM" works exceptionally well, and I adapted to it in less than a day.

Greater than the Sum of its Parts

So this turned out to be a layered object lesson. I was genuinely surprised that two different manufacturers didn't know how to address this out-of-the-gate. In a computing world where so much consumer-level hardware is plug-and-play, this was a surprisingly high-friction affair. I'm glad it was eventually solved, but it goes to show that you can't necessarily count on all domain knowledge to be in one place. That's one of the reasons I'm leaving this trail of breadcrumbs here. I had wondered whether trying the NVidia Control Panel settings with the first monitor would have made it work. But given that model also had issues with potential screen burn (how are those designs still a thing?) I would have returned it either way.

The final result is much better than I expected, providing flexibility in managing workloads across the two local machines. It also gives me more options for attaching to VMs - whether GPU-provisioned AMIs in AWS or Data Science VMs in Azure. I can essentially run a "quad" setup where the third and fourth "boxes" are machine learning instances doing full-bore workloads in the cloud, with the burden of running the virtual desktops for those sessions spanning the two slabs under my desk. But again that's a discussion I'll save for some other time. For now I'm happy just to have the pieces in place for true multi-tasking in the home office.

Top comments (19)

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skthegr8 profile image
SK

Amazing article and extremely useful! Thank you for all the help sir. I can’t even imagine why this isn’t part of the basic guide with every monitor. Sadly some brands like LG doesn’t have windows version for dual screen controls but just has Mac OS version

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houstonhhaynes profile image
Houston Haynes • Edited

Thanks so much! I agree that monitor manufacturers should do more to "meet users where they are" instead of those companies expecting everyone to have tribal knowledge of those that inhabit that world.

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oakcollin profile image
Collin Oak

Thank you very much, it helped me. My Linux machine works fine after using the NVidia Control panel. My windows laptop is giving me trouble though. I can stretch the picture to the full half of the 4K monitor, windows settings says it's 1920x2160, NVidia driver says the same, however the picture looks like 1920x1080 stretched to 1920x2160. So for the time being it makes only sense to use the left half with full resolution and right (Widnows) with FHD only.

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oakcollin profile image
Collin Oak

I actually see in the dialog for setting screens in Windows, going into "Advanced Screen Settings" of the 2nd monitor, that it says: Desktop resolution 1920x1200, Active Signal Resolution 1920x2160. Obviously, my resolution is set to 1920x2160. I can't find a way to affect this weird behaviour.

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oakcollin profile image
Collin Oak

Fixed!! Using superuser.com/questions/1396229/wi... and particularly this note: "If the correct resolution is already selected then select a incorrect one from list select apply ok then do the same thing for correct resolution. (Windows 10 version 20H2)". I switched the mode on the graphic card to 2560x1440 and it significantly improved, I then switched it back to what was set - 2560x1920 - and it works perfectly now!

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insight profile image
xbliss

I am going to follow in your foot steps.

One curiosity, how do you get the Custom new "Full Screen Resolutions" for
a PBP x 2 or 4 - if your laptop does not have Nvidia GPU?

Can the same be done via Windows?

I wonder if anyone tried pushing one of these odd resolution spaces using a Surface Pro?

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houstonhhaynes profile image
Houston Haynes

I imagine you might try to find the same settings for the respective video driver - AMD or Intel/on-chip? I'm assuming you mean that you're driving an external monitor with the Surface and it's one of several inputs - such as my case where I'm driving a 4K with an MSI laptop (clamshell closed in most cases) and an Intel NUC on another input. I haven't had any difficulty in setting it up with the AMD equivalent control panel - just a bit different in how you get to the controls. You just have to experiment with it. There's always an odd dance between the OS and the GPU driver, even if it's an on-chip co-processor that Intel piggy-backs on their laptop chips.

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pheelon profile image
Pheelon • Edited

personally i had the best results for this with one of the cheapest available models on the market (at least in europe) - the Philips BDM4350UC - its an older Model (released in 2016) but it was actually designed to be used this way (Phillips calls it MultiView) and supports PbP 4 - wich means it can display 2 to 4 separate Display Sources in 2 by 2 Grid and it adjusts the relations between those sources (up to a point).

At one time i had it setup to display 1 Source at 2160x1920 and 2 others at 1920x1080 (over each other) next to it.

Edit: An this one actually looks a lot like your first picture - so if that was it i can answer your question with - yes it works.

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oakcollin profile image
Collin Oak

Cool! Gotta try that 1/2 4K + 2xFHD setup :-)

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insight profile image
xbliss

I am going to follow in your foot steps.

One curiosity, how do you get the Custom new "Full Screen Resolutions" for
a PBP x 2 or 4 - if your laptop does not have Nvidia GPU?

Can the same be done via Windows?

I wonder if anyone tried pushing one of these odd resolution spaces using a Surface Pro?

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andrkaln profile image
andrkaln

thanks for idea to look into driver scaling setting, finally made it work PBP
for philips 349X7, however in my case, picture qualify seems affected, black text (cleartype-off) on white background fine, but on grey background, i see halo like shadows (lighter not darker). seems monitor is not so good in picture composition and artifacts appear. similar happens if sharpness is tweaked up too high :(

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houstonhhaynes profile image
Houston Haynes

Interesting. Glad you got it to work. I suppose they may sacrifice some scaling in order to support two inputs.

Side note: I have to admit that I don't use the ViewSplit window-arrangement management app as much as I thought I would.It's clunky and I can get nearly the same behavior from the default Windows 10 conventions of dragging to corners/edges to snap things into place. I do like the arrangement that allows for three 1:1 windows along the bottom - for multiple editing terminals. But now I mostly use Visual Studio Code and simply to splits in the editor. [shrug]

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magnuse profile image
magnuse

Thanks for taking the time and writing this. This helped me solve the PBP problem I had with my LG 32UD99-W. Instead of getting two small screens keeping the old aspect ratio it is now setup to show two 2160x1920 screens when in PBP.

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insight profile image
xbliss

I am going to follow in your foot steps.

One curiosity, how do you get the Custom new "Full Screen Resolutions" for
a PBP x 2 or 4 - if your laptop does not have Nvidia GPU?

Can the same be done via Windows?

I wonder if anyone tried pushing one of these odd resolution spaces using a Surface Pro?

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andrew_bruce_4f507c258a94 profile image
Andrew Bruce

Can anybody suggest current (2024) PBP solution which will work successfully for MacBook / Win 11 boxes? I really want to have a single solution (small space, no room for multiple monitors) and I'm sure that combining apple / m$ into the same mix is going to be problematic.

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houstonhhaynes profile image
Houston Haynes • Edited

Is it not visible in the sub-header? ViewSonic's VX4380-4K (I just noticed that Dev doesn't show it - but it appears when referenced in LinkedIn - go figure) You'll also see a little Easter Egg in one of the screen shots. :)

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dokall profile image
Sakthi Vel

thank you, Houston.

Sakthi

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santhoshr profile image
santhoshr

Thank you very much for the article, able to split nicely with my Acer 32 inch 4k monitor, with two inputs from PC and Work laptop