Hmmmm, I actually found BBOnline to be better with obscure foreign titles and OOP stuff. They had The Killer (John Woo), Murder by Death (Neil Simon murder parody), and The Car (Mr. Streisand), all out of print on DVD, the Wizard series from Japan (which Netflix still doesn't have), Azumi (ditto) and a few other foreign movies (and the Disgaea anime series). I quit them because they often sent me the wrong movie and their website was horrible and slow after they "upgraded" it. And they would frequently send the wrong movie.
Netflix's selection is getting better though. But I stuck with them because their website is quite easy to find stuff on, is reasonably fast.
Anyway, while I can understand you being frustrated it's gone, I can't imagine they were making much money off of it. I mean, I think BB makes most of their money off of rentals of the most recent releases. The original idea of the total access I think was to reduce the cost of postage for returns for their online plan. But it probably ate into their rental profits.
Netflix reduces their postage costs by a) throttling you (they don't say how many movies a month, but they limit the number you can rent a month) and b) when a movie not in your local center, they delay it an extra day.
Anyway, I can't feel sorry for BB, because they basically made easy money in the VHS days. Studios would sell movies for $99, so people had no choice but to rent. But they overexpanded, since they were making such profits, and it's been catching up to them the last several years. So they had to play catch up with Netflix quick, but found they couldn't. So they've tried various things, like a cheap rate (which they had to raise), then 2 free game rentals (which they stopped and started a few times), then the total access thing which apparently was a big success (and made Netflix lower their prices by a buck per month). But too much of a success for its own good
