UniView is ready to make its case

Patrick Custer and his company, UniView Technologies (www.uniview.net), want to change the way you use your TV. In Custer's vision of the future, a remote-controlled box will sit atop everyone's television, adding telephone, Internet, and e-mail access to the regular fare of network and cable TV offerings.

But translating that vision into a successful business has not been easy.

The idea started in 1993, when Custer purchased Curtis Mathes, a company well-known for making high-end TVs. He had another plan for the company: Instead of making TVs, make the TV a focal point for a new technology.

He renamed the company UniView and set about making his vision a reality. The past five a years have been filled with some false steps and a lot of dogged persistence, but still, not much has gone smoothly for Custer and company.

The first sticking point was simply getting set-top users on the Internet. UniView tried to work with Internet service providers but didn't have much success--the ISPs couldn't handle all the features UniView wanted to include.

So the company had to start over and design its own system. UniView came up with the b Xpressway, an operation that routes phone, fax, and modem signals in the right directions and converts web pages from PC- to TV-size. When the technology was finally ready,

UniView formed an alliance with Motorola to get the box on the market. UniView plans to license the Xpressway technology so that other companies that develop set-top boxes, like Motorola, can license the software to run their applications.

But now, of course, UniView is not alone in the set-top market: Plenty of other technology providers have picked up on the idea, including Microsoft (which recently acquired WebTV), Sun Microsystems, and Spyglass.

Another challenge, Custer says, is making consumers understand what a set-top box does; UniView has introduced the box on a limited retail basis to prove the concept. "It's difficult to explain," he admits, "but once people stick around and listen to the pitch, they're hooked."

The next step: making investors understand. And that hasn't been too easy: In November, UniView was one of several local stocks about to be delisted by Nasdaq. But Custer is staying optimistic. "I'm not too concerned about that," he says. "I think that as we do high-profile jobs, the market will respond, and we'll recover."

And things are indeed looking up: UniView recently teamed up with Mary Kay to develop a customized Xpressway that would allow the Mary Kay sales staff to traffic product orders and make e-commerce transactions--a perfect example of the multilevel marketing UniView's box is designed for.