Do P2219H monitors have the ability to switch input from 2 PCs?

@JulieBABI  I understood what you were trying to achieve.  Any display that has multiple inputs is going to offer a way to switch back and forth between them -- otherwise how would you use other inputs?  So yes you can connect separate devices to each of the various inputs and switch the input on the display back and forth as desired.  But since you mentioned a KVM, I will note that what the display will NOT do is allow you to switch a keyboard and mouse back and forth between PCs when you switch video inputs.  There are some displays that have a built-in KVM.  That is achieved by having multiple USB "inputs" (technically upstream ports) to allow you to create a USB data path back to multiple PCs, and then within the display's interface you can associate a given upstream port with a given video input, such that whenever the display is on a particular input, it will also use the associated USB upstream port.  And that way, any USB devices plugged into the display's USB ports, like a keyboard and mouse, will be switched back and forth between your different PCs automatically when you switch a video input back and forth.  The P2219H does not offer that.  It has built-in USB ports, but it only has a single upstream USB connection, so you'd only be able to connect that to one source system at a time.  An external KVM would handle displays, USB, and often analog audio if you needed to work with speakers or a non-USB headset.  Dual display KVMs are especially convenient because in that case, you can push a single button on a KVM and you will immediately switch over BOTH displays and all USB devices routed through the KVM between your PCs.  But if you don't want a full KVM, an intermediate solution would be a USB switch like this one.  It allows you to plug up to four USB peripherals into it and then connect the switch back to two different PCs, so that you can toggle which PC can see those peripherals at any given time.  But this won't cover audio as some KVMs can, and in this setup every time you wanted to switch between PCs, you'd be changing inputs on each display separately AND toggling the smart switch.  But of course it's a lot smaller and less expensive than a dual display KVM.

Hopefully this helps!

Hi @jphughan I appreciate your answering but I have a more specific question.  I know how to hook PC's to monitors in general.  What I'm trying to do that's unusual is to hook TWO DIFFERENT PC's to the SAME monitor and switch the monitor's input back and forth from one PC (work laptop) to another (home PC) as I need to use one computer or the other.  I'm trying to find out if I can do that without a KVM switch and without constantly disconnecting the video cable from one computer and connecting the other's cable and then back and forth. That'd be unworkable. 

I'm told some monitors have that capability, so the question is whether THIS particular monitor has that ability.  That functionality would allow the video cables from both computer to always remain connected (one DisplayPort and the other HDMI), but the active input can be switched from one to the other computer's video input. 

I didn't see anything in the specs and I couldn't get an answer from Dell's support chat service if THIS monitor can do that. 

Actually, the User Guide shows that button # 2 on the front allows input switching, so that gives me optimism that that would be the function of that switch?? 

@jphughan Wow, that's awesome input, thanks!  I thought the idea of multiple ports on the monitor was to be able to connect to computers with a wide range of video out ports, but it's news ot me that two ports can be used at the same time and actively switch among them! 

It's great to know that some monitors have built-in KVM ports. That would be elegant. 

I had indeed planned to get a full KVM as my solution, but choosing one is taking time and reading reviews of them is scaring me because the reviews suggest they're plagued with failure modes and gotchas. So I was turning to the this idea of monitor switching as an interim solution while I continue to research and try full KVM switches.

Would you happen to have a recommendation for particularly good full KVM switch for 2 monitors with DisplayPort and audio?  (These days with all the video conferencing, audio needs to get switched too, as you noted).  And does the fact that my Dell PC has a discrete video card make any difference? My work laptop has a USB-C dock and I'll be using a wireless mouse and keyboard (so does that require special DDM USB mode and is that unusual to find on a KVM switch)? It seems not all of them send a KeepAlive signal for the mouse and keyboard, but I don't have a sense whether that's common or something special I'd have to look far and wide for. 

Julie

@JulieBABI  Happy to help!

The ability to actually USE two inputs at the same time would be picture-in-picture or picture-by-picture.  I didn't check whether the P2219H supports either of those, but it almost certainly does not support the latter.  That is much more commonly found on ultra-wide displays.  But you can absolutely keep multiple source devices persistently connected and toggle at will between which source the display actually shows.  When I was in college I had my desktop connected to one input, my laptop connected to another, and my cable TV box connected to a third.

If you want a dual display KVM, I'd suggest the IOGear GCS1942.  I recommended it to a friend of mine for switching between a desktop PC and a laptop docking station, which he used alternately with his PC and Mac laptops.  It's performed flawlessly, and it supports dual DisplayPort displays up to 4K 60 Hz each, assuming the source system does, of course.  But it is definitely expensive.  The fact that you're using a discrete video card doesn't make a difference, but you will need both of your source systems (or dock, as the case may be) to be able to send two DisplayPort connections to the KVM.  (There is technically an alternative where if you only have a single DisplayPort connection, you can connect the two displays in a daisy chain to only one of the KVM's outputs and run both displays independently from a single source connection, but then you need displays that support daisy chaining.)  I'm assuming dual DisplayPort connections aren't a problem on a desktop PC with a discrete video card, but the USB-C dock might be an issue depending on model.  If you don't have dual DisplayPort or Mini-DisplayPort outputs but you do have a USB-C port that supports video output -- which not all USB-C ports do -- you can use the USB-C port as a DisplayPort output with an appropriate cable.  If you're not sure, let me know what dock you've got and I can try to help.

As for DDM, if you have peripherals plugged into the display's USB ports, you can just plug the display's upstream USB connection into one of the USB ports on the KVM, and it will then switch whatever is plugged into those ports between source systems when you toggle the KVM.  You shouldn't need DDM if you've got a real KVM in the mix.

As for KeepAlive, I'm not sure what the concern is there.