Mostly, they would be sold by word of mouth, through pubs and video retailers.

It shipped just 35,000 sets to the nation's video retailers.

The number of video retailers, which jumped from 13,000 outlets in 1984 to 24,000 in 1986, has risen by 3,000 so far this year.

And those figures do not even take into account department stores, catalogue showrooms and video retailers who sell jewelry.

According to company figures, 27,000 copies of "Grim" have been bought by video retailers.

Instead, the video retailer buys each cassette for a high wholesale price, currently about $65 for a top title, and keeps all the rental revenue.

But as the only publicly traded video retailer, Blockbuster has greater access to capital than its rivals.

While there, he oversaw development of the video retailer's online brand.

In fact, video retailers estimate that racy versions of movies are much more popular than the tamer versions.

Three years ago Mr. Burnside began to collect data, by mailing a list of 100 titles to 1,000 video retailers around the country.