I agree with audionirvana - SACD isn't dead. On the other hand, releases that appeal to my interests are spotty at best (jazz and classical really are the only areas in which the SACD catalog is still growing appreciably), which is probably why my collection is still small even three and a half years after buying my first SACD player.

Surround music is most likely to continue only in the form of DVD-Video and Blu-ray discs (and HD-DVD, at least for a little bit longer). Examples such as Nine Inch Nails' Beside You In Time and the Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds discs offer an idea of what may take the place of DVD-Audio/SACD. With audio options of multichannel PCM, TrueHD (which is just a dressed-up version of DVD-A's MLP), and DTS-HD MA on Blu-ray/HD-DVD, we can still get lossless multichannel audio capable of matching DVD-A and SACD. At this point, though, I doubt we'll see a new dedicated high-resolution packaged audio format. The marketplace failure of both high-res formats and the sales slump that CD has been in for a long time now are not going to justify such a format.

As for your Pioneer 578A vs. a 980H, I can't say for certain as I've never heard the Pioneer. I will say that the 980H was at least equal to my Yamaha DVD-S1500 for DVD-Audio and actually better for SACD.