doors for good, owner Cal Grimes said yesterday.

His pursuit of other interests led to a decision last year to sell the firm, although to date he has received no serious enquiries.

The business employs two part-time staff and closes officially on Saturday, although it will re-open on a limited basis next week to allow for the return of rented videotapes.

Mr. Grimes said, "I would prefer to give people the chance of returning the tapes themselves, than to put the whole matter over to the credit association and let them chase individuals down.'' But he said, "Lately, I've spent very little time at the business. It has been a very profitable business, but my time is being spent elsewhere, right now.

"So, in the absence of a buyer, I might as well close down and have a colossal tape sale of the more than four and a half thousand titles that I am willing to sell probably by February. Over the years, I have always had tape sales.'' Mr. Grimes said that while the Court & Dundonald Street business was still making money, videotape rentals dropped off quite a bit since the introduction of cable television several years ago, and dropped off again with the introduction of more convenient satellite dish services similar to Direct TV.

He said, "That improvement to the satellite television market definitely had an impact.

"When I went in the business in 1986, there were a lot of video stores. On Court Street alone and in the surrounding area, there were about seven or eight of them.

"I was the only one left in the city of Hamilton up until two and a half years ago when another one opened. But it definitely has remained a profitable operation.'' The businessman said that access to popular titles had never been a problem through his US distributors.

He said, "My main distributor is out of New Jersey. We get catalogues on a weekly basis and order a month in advance. They are then shipped weekly through Fedex.

"In most arrangements, you would be able to send the titles back when you are finished renting them. But I had an arrangement where I could just sell them after a while.'' Mr. Grimes has become increasingly interested in the church, and concedes his faith is one reason why he is less than comfortable with operating a business that thrives on the film industry, especially with increasingly violent titles.

He said, "In a way that is true, because you have all this violence and horror stories. It is not the kind of thing that my church, Revival Assembly on Ewing Street, would associate with.''