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DALLAS Blockbuster will be testing different models for pricing and store formats, the company announced this week.

Chief executive officer Jim Keyes said that while raising prices could boost results almost immediately, he preferred to take an approach that was mindful of customers.

"Are we raising prices? No, as of today," Keyes told a company analyst day in New York. "What I don't want to do is raise them three or four times."

Keyes said Blockbuster will experiment with store layouts to add downloading stations, books or beverages in a bid to increase its customer base. He expects the new emphasis on stores to turn around falling same-store sales and rental revenues.

Additionally, Keyes said it was working on a new Web site for the company that will be integrated with the recently acquired Movielink service. He envisioned a future in which Blockbuster was synonymous with digital downloads.

"There's no clear-cut dominant brand for digital downloads," he said. "We want to take Blockbuster and make it mean digital download. We've got a lot of work to do, but we know it's possible, and we'll be aggressively working on that."

But he said that change would not come in the fourth quarter, nor would the initiatives be "an overnight success." Keyes said the company was looking at recapturing some of the revenue it lost when it abolished late fees and allowed some online customers to exchange DVDs for free at its stores.