Surprising that no one had an opinion about this question. I'll go out on a limb, even though I'm not familiar with either one, and say that despite the 414's reputation in its day, and its higher sticker price, the 578 may well be the "better" player. Trickle-down (God, how I hate to use that term) over the last seven years has been considerable. The 578 has all of the 414's good traits and then some. Its video, and probably audio, DAC stand to be improvements. It's also a universal player, covering just about every format including SACD and DVD-A. But if you have both of them, why don't you test them head to head for what's most important for you?