Do you realize that phones, tablets, laptops, most PCs don't have an option of "just add speakers"? You are technically correct, yes full Dolby Duper Atmo 9.2.4.8.100500 system is better. But people without them are not using their setups incorrectly, they have valid setups they have valid use case and they don't get basic level of quality which IS possible and WAS possible just a few years ago with proper channel mixing.
It is entirely the fault of people buying shitty plastic shovelware pc laptops that they ended up with laptops with dogshit speakers. You can buy laptops with good sounding speakers
Dude, you are completely daft here, bringing some imaginary stuff like "morality" and "equity" into a technical discussion. The fact is that sound producers can easily fix stereo tracks to be legible and they actually did it for decades, before the recent hype came. And you are white knighting billionaires working for megacorps, for no discernible reason. What would happen to you personally if Nolans of the world would mix a better stereo track (which they already do anyway)? Your ego will be hurt? Or what? No one is "taking" precious Dolby Atmo from you. Better stereo tracks can exist in this world at the same time as theatrical surround tracks, surprise surprise.
If you are at an arm's length from a proper amplifier/speaker setup, why are you using a tiny screen to watch movies? (that was a rhetorical question)
Phone/tablet/laptop etc. in my top comment was not a technological limitation, like "oh no, we don't have a port or protocol to connect o speakers and so we can't use them". It was a logistical limitation. Like being physically in place without speakers or possibility to even buy them. Traveling, renting, having big family and only one set of speakers, and so on. Situations where you can't just pluck a Dolby setup from a thin air but do still watch movies.
Here is a datapoint - in the whole world around 1-2 *billion* headphones are sold, every single year. I would bet that at least a double digit percentage of those numbers had been used to watch a movie at least once. Proposing that all those people in all those situations bought themselves a surround speaker setup just to understand voice track in the movies is an inane take.
