A movie, as die-hard film buffs will tell you, has to be watched on a screen that stretches across the length and breadth of a wall. Anything else is a mere compromise. Really?

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I disagree. And I am not alone in believing that this is just a myth that has been perpetuated over the years with efforts on to keep growing the flock of movie-going faithfuls.

Cinema is the art of make-believe where the lines between illusion and reality get blurred. We are often tricked into believing what we see.

Long ago, when technology and the avenues for leisure and entertainment were different from now, the theatre going experience could have been well worth the time and the money spent. But the times have changed and most of the advantages that theatres held out then, no longer hold true.

The biggest advantage that a cinema hall still has in the movie watching experience is something that has been artificially created and controlled for primarily business reasons. Most movies are still first released on the big screen and other platforms have to often wait for months for their turn.

Many films today are profitable even before they are released, thanks publicity, merchandise and other deals. Yet, box-office collections matter a lot and is still the measure of a movie's worth. Ratings, reviews and awards are often for posterity.

But the box office has an unfair advantage. It thrives because of a controlled environment, in which the silver screen confers legitimacy, allowing a paying audience can watch a movie as soon as it is released.

This artificial scarcity that is one of the primary reasons for the poor-quality bootleg copies doing the rounds on the Internet and sold as polythene-packed DVDs on street corners. This practice of restricted release, in vogue in India since 'Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!' (1994), has encouraged piracy but it also has reaped benefits for filmmakers and this undoubtedly trickled down to us filmgoers by the way of improved quality of filmmaking.

The pirates have come a long way from the shaky and blurred VHS recording of Salman and Madhuri’s landmark on-screen romance that I first watched two decades ago when a CamRip of 'HAHK' was broadcast by the neighbourhood cable TV operator.

To counter this threat of piracy, the myth of the big screen experience is being hyped more than ever before.

'Johnny Gaddaar' (2007), that brilliant Shriram Raghavan movie, went off the screens even before the word could get around about its brilliance. Thankfully it was soon available on DVD. I watched the entire film on an LG KG300 with a 2-inch screen (a large-screen phone for those days) with earphones plugged in.

So engrossed I was watching the movie, that I watched the entire length at a stretch sitting on the floor amidst a power cut in Pandav Nagar (the then-unauthorised colony in East Delhi that was home to me for a good five years).

The medium isn't the message.

Content is indeed king

If the content is engrossing, then the size of the screen does not matter. And neither does the acoustics. And proof is that are the countless commuters you see in crowded metros, local trains, cabs and city buses, enjoying movies on their mobile phones, unmindful of the chaos around.

I watched Shah Rukh Khan's mega-budget 'Ra.One' (2011) in 3D. That 'immersive experience' didn't make it a better film.

The vast improvements in personal technology also isn't helping the theatre's cause. Large screen televisions and home theatre systems have recreated theatre-like experience in living rooms. OTT services have made finding and playing movies more accessible than ever before. Not to mention the luxury of switching to another movie if the first one fails to hold you.

As communication is evolving, so are individual consumption behaviours. We have become more personal in our choices and consumption habits. In this context cinema halls appear to be caught in a time warp.

Theatre-going still remains largely a group activity (though I must confess watching Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge some 5-7 times all alone in a theatre). It is a family/friends outing, meant to be followed by Facebook check-ins and personal review posts.

Watching a movie on the big screen becomes an excuse for many to break the mundanity of the home. A lot of cinema has been escapist and going out for the movies can also be seen as an extension of that.

Escapism is ephemeral

Today, much of the core experiences of film watching remains intact even when it is taken out of the auditoriums, even onto a handheld device.

Accompanying my in-laws to an Indore multiplex back, a couple of years ago, I happened to notice that the video specs that preceded the film mention 1080p.

1080p! That's a resolution boasted by many smartphones and is is the minumum standard for home television sets.

This means that the same video that you can watch on your smartphone is being projected to the huge screen in front of you.

Bigger isn't necessarily better.

The best use for the inexpensive Google Cardboard virtual reality headset for me was not in the VR games and apps, but as a personal movie watching device. Both for 2D, as well as 3D movies. A VR headset can very well replicate the in-theatre experience of sitting before a massive screen minus the wailing babies and ringing phones.

Some VR apps can also add seats, audience and other theatre paraphernalia. Even though VR technology hasn't yet lived up to the hype of its early days, it is only getting better.

When you take cinema away from the public space into the private, along comes convenience or control, as you see it. The viewer now isn't a passive consumer. She can play the movie at her convenience. Pause, go back, skip forward, add subtitles. further enrich the movie watching experience. Also it is bad manners to have a second screen on inside a theatre, but in the privacy of your home - the movie watching experience can extend beyond.

I haven't watched 'Sholay' (1975) on the big screen and chances are most people born after the late 1970s also didn't (notwithstanding the 'Sholay in 3D' released in 2014). But is the impact of Ramesh Sippy blockbuster on our minds any less than that of the people who watched in on the big screen?

COVID-19 has only added yet another compelling reason to this long list of why watching movies in theatres is overrated.