Five years ago this week… The battle of the set top giants in the West was almost ready to commence as the Arris–Pace merger was approved by the Department of Justice. This followed similar approvals being granted to Technicolor’s acquisition of Cisco’s set top business just the week prior. Faultline felt both were ‘done deals’ from the moment they were announced – offering both companies the opportunity to scale and fend off the invasion of consumer electronics specialists like Samsung and Humax. With cloud play capabilities from Pace’s software elements, as well as its acquisition of ActiveVideo, it seemed Arris had the advantage over Technicolor, which was only able to achieve those capabilities through partnership with Cisco. — Discovery Plus…