DiVA™

DiVA™ was created to fill a market need. All of the stakeholders within the television value chain are anxiously awaiting the arrival of an “addressable” advertising system that makes sense. To date, most solutions are too expensive and too resource intensive to justify the effort. Channel Islands has created a solution that is efficient, scalable, and low-cost (CAPEX and OPEX).

Channel Islands Team

The success of Channel Islands is due to an excellent team with decades of combined experience in the field of digital television.

Ross Cooper, Chief Executive Officer

Ross Cooper has 25 years of experience as a software developer, successful entrepreneur and founder of Channel Islands. He is an accomplished inventor with numerous patents to his name.

Founding Verimatrix in 2000, he built a dynamic and focused management team that moved Verimatrix quickly into a market-leading position. It overtook the category leader in 2004 – just four years after launch. Today, Verimatrix is the recognized leader in content security and watermarking for IPTV deployments worldwide, and counts more than 200 multichannel service providers as its customers.

Mr. Cooper is a trusted advisor and valued partner to several major Hollywood studios, in particular 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. and has been responsible for the creation and operation of many new technology companies in the areas of Cable Television, Psychometrics and Health Sciences.

Mike Beatty, Senior Vice President, Engineering

Mike Beatty has worked in the software development industry for over 25 years and has played a key role in several startup software companies.  Mr. Beatty joins Channel Islands after eight years at Verimatrix, where he was chief architect of the award winning VCAS product line.  

Mr. Beatty’s expertise is developing new products and technologies and building the software development teams required to bring these products to market.  His particular expertise in cryptography, security, networking and designing large scalable software systems for tier 1 telephone companies on a variety of platforms contributed greatly to Verimatrix’s success.

Prior to Verimatrix, Mr. Beatty was the chief architect and developer for American Grocer, where he created an online grocery store consisting of multiple integrated systems for ordering, scheduling, delivering and replenishing groceries over the Internet.   As a founder of Nicheware Systems, Inc., Mr. Beatty created helpdesk software applications that provided remote control and helpdesk tracking systems. He has worked with a number of Southern California companies, including Peregrine Systems, American Grocer, and Candle Corporation.

Robert Payne, Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing

Robert Payne has over 20 years experience in International Pay-TV, Video, and Voice and Data communications. Mr Payne joined Channel Islands as Senior VP Sales and Marketing from Verimatrix, where he served three years as General Manager and Vice President of Sales and EMEA. Prior to this he worked with conditional access and content protection provider Irdeto Access in the Netherlands: heading up sales for Broadband, IPTV and mobile solutions. Before joining Irdeto he was employed as European Vice President with broadband communications equipment provider Next Level Communications (NLC), marketing a Full Service Access Networking (FSAN) solution to Telco’s. Earlier, Robert worked as Program and Business Development Director for the Video Networking Division (VND) of Tektronix Inc., and has extensive experience in pre-production, post-production and video transport technologies.

Leveraging considerable experience and in-depth knowledge of the video, broadcast and networking industries Robert has built a consistent track record of successfully identifying and capitalizing on opportunities for innovative, leading edge technologies.

A dedicated linguist and student of Japanese art and culture, competent in several languages including German and Japanese.

Paul Burgess, Creative Director, Project Manager

Paul Burgess has been at the forefront of interface design and programming for almost two decades. Mr. Burgess brings a wealth of professional, creative and leadership skills to the Channel Islands team.

He served as Vice President and Creative Director of American Grocer, designing and developing the grocery delivery e-commerce website SanDiegoGrocer.com.

In 1995, he founded Intershock Design Studio providing Flash design and development for industry leaders such as Callaway Golf Company, AOL, Home Depot, Lockheed Martin, Iomega and others.

In the late 90s, Mr. Burgess was Director of Internet Development at Applied Graphics Technolgies, where he had responsibility for the management, design, creation, development and programming of interactive websites and Multimedia. He was a Founding Member of nu.millennia inc. and served as Senior 3D Animator.

Dave Ekhaus, Director of Software Engineering

Dave Ekhaus has spent the last 15 years as a professional software developer. He started his career as a software engineer for Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York, working on several high profile projects including PhotoCDT, and Kodak Color Management Systems. An interest in working in a more entrepreneurial environment led Mr. Ekhaus to leave Kodak and join several smaller companies, where he quickly became fascinated with databases and the possibility of generating dynamic personalized publications for consumers. During this period, Mr. Ekhaus served as Chief Software Architect for Gist Communications, an early innovator in online TV listings.

Following Gist, Mr. Ekhaus joined Slingmedia, helping add innovative functionality to the ground-breaking Sling software, including an Electronic Program Guide as well as innovative real-time character analysis of textual content within video streams.

Mr. Ekhaus left Slingmedia in early 2008 and later joined Channel Islands, bringing to bear his unique skill set to build our range of solftware solutions. Adding value to the end-user customer experience is what drives Dave's passion for developing truly unique solutions to difficult problems.

Tom Rainey, Software Developer

Tom Rainey has over ten years of experience in the software industry. In 1999 he joined St. Bernard Software where he built highly-scalable and distributed software solutions.

In 2001, Internet worms became more widespread and his efforts at St. Bernard Software provided system administrators with the ability to patch, update, and immunize tens of thousands of machines simultaneously.

Mr. Rainey joined Verimatrix in the spring of 2005 where he received his introduction to the IPTV world. He produced significant server-side contributions within Verimatrix's category share-leader IPTV DRM solutions. His efforts assisted in Verimatrix's growth by interfacing the DRM solution with many Middleware market leaders, including Myrio/Siemens, Kasenna/Espial and SeaChange to name a few.

Tom appreciates software for the problem solving aspect and enjoys building innovative solutions from the ground up.

Mike Boom, Software Developer

Mike Boom has worked in the software engineering field since 1986 where he has been employed writing software for various companies. His primary languages of expertise include C/C++ as well as Java. He has a diverse experience in computer software languages ranging from Awk to assembler on Mainframe systems.

In 2004 Mr. Boom entered the IPTV field by becoming an employee of Verimatrix where he worked on both the Windows and Unix flavors of the Verimatrix VCAS system. His broad experience and ability makes him a valuable asset to any development team.

Lindsay Gardner, Co-Founder

Lindsay Gardner is a 25-year veteran of the international broadcast industry with significant experience in cable, new media, sales, strategic planning, marketing, production and journalism. Since mid-2007, he has been a partner with MediaTech Capital Partners LLC a financier of media companies, where he has launched four new media companies. They include Reach Media Ltd, where hs served as Interim President.

Until mid-2007 Mr. Gardner was President of Sales and Marketing for Fox Cable Networks, leading the $2.2 billion division that distributes Fox’s 31 cable networks, 35 local television stations, plus HD and VOD content. Mr. Gardner oversaw distribution, marketing and deployment strategies for many of the US’ most successful networks, including: FX, Fox Sports Net, National Geographic Channel and Speed Channel.

While there, Mr. Gardner also forged an historic deal and partnership with China’s government and media ministries securing the launch of News Corporation’s Xing Kong, the only Western-owned television channel to be legally delivered to Mainland China cable homes. He remains a trusted business partner and friend to China’s top media companies and ministries, including CCTV, SARFT and CITVC.