Ahh summer. You’ve waited so long to be able to go outside and play, right? So who’s going to forego solar rays in favor of those that emanate from that little TV screen that’s been one of the only sources of entertainment you’ve had all winter?

Surprisingly, quite a number of you. The number of video rentals is rising with the temperatures. So, for those who prefer the glow of the tube to the blaze of the sun, here’s a look at what’s going on and why at your local video store.

“Business picks up a lot in the summer,” Pat Dolan of Rockford’s Cinema Centre said. “People have a lot more free time. The kids are out of school and their parents are trying to keep them occupied. There are a lot of people in their 20’s coming in now, since the colleges have let out,” he added.

This age group seems to be the one most often cited as summer video hounds. “I guess it’s because these people have been weaned on TV,” John Bystrom of Rockford’s Adventureland Video said. “I thought business would slow down when people had other things going on, but it seems like it’s picked up instead,” he added.

So, just what are these people renting? Michael Douglas and Glenn Close are steaming up a lot of summers in last season’s box office smash “Fatal Attraction,” while newer releases like Dennis Quaid’s dual offerings, “Suspect” and “D.O.A.” are rapidly ascending the “most rented” charts.

Kevin Costner and Robert DeNiro are battling it out in a lot of living rooms this season in “The Untouchables,” and believe it or not, Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey are still mamboing across a number of small screens in that teen-dream fluffball, “Dirty Dancing.”

Young urban professionals are obviously enjoying watching themselves on the screen. “Wall Street” and “Baby Boom” are particularly popular choices with the under-40’s crowd.

“There’s a big call for action movies in the summer,” Bystrom said, explaining the popularity of films like “Action Jackson” and “Full Metal Jacket.”

“Basically, in the summer, people are renting new movies,” he added. “It seems like they want to watch the classics in the winter, though the Marilyn Monroe movies that have recently been released on video are doing very well.”

Richard Howard of Video Unlimited in Rockford said films which are now being ‘sequelized’ are very popular at his shop. “We’re getting a lot of calls for ‘Phantasm’ and ‘Crocodile Dundee’ now,” he said. “Whenever there’s a ‘part II,’ the old ones go out a lot.”

And of course, there are some types of films that are popular regardless of the changing climate. “Movies like ‘Gone With The Wind’ go out steadily all the time,” Bystrom said. And scary movies seem to know no special season. As Dolan commented, “People who watch horror movies are always going to watch horror movies.”

But why all the renting? Perhaps there’s nothing else to watch. “Our business picked up 50 percent during the convention last week. I guess nobody wanted to watch the Democrats,” Bystrom said. “To be fair, we’ll probably see the same thing for the Republicans, but we’ll have to wait a few weeks,” he added.