Look in the BI help file.
In terms of recording, in each camera on the record tab select "continuous and triggered". That records sub streams until the camera is triggered then the recording switches to main stream.
In terms of display, on a multi camera view BI uses the sub streams, assuming sub streams are available, but will switch to the main stream for a single camera view. If full streams were used in multi camera views there would be no reduction in CPU utilization and, therefor, no reason to use sub streams.