There has been a lot of questions whether the 500W can play RCE discs if you use Region Free firmware. The good news is you can and there is a way to do it without any pauses betwen chapters too.

So what is RCE? Region Code Enhancement is a secondary region checking procedure being introduced on DVD discs to stop players that have been set to Region Free (or Region 0) from playing the disc. It is done by a clever bit of software programming on the DVD disc which checks the region code of the disc to the region code on the player and if they don't match then you get a message like this:

This message is NOT the "Wrong Region" message displayed on your player if you are trying to play for example a Region 1 disc in a player set for Region 4. This message is on the disc itself as can be seen by the Universal Studios logo on the left picture and the message "This disc is intended to play on non-modified Region 1 players" on the right picture.

Here are just a few DVD's with RCE:

Charlie's Angels............................. The Patriot................................... The 6th Day

There will be plenty more DVD's with RCE in the future as the war between the Studios and the Region Free hacks for DVD players continutes to hot up even further. Without getting too political it is a war the Studio's shall not and will not win.

This is the procedure as supplied by MBadd on the Apex Forums. Thanks MBadd!
Note that your success may vary due to the different techniques of RCE. In all cases you will be able to play the main movie but some discs will not allow access to any special features.

"Below is the procedure for accessing RCE disk on a region free chip...The only difference between The Patriot and Chalies Angels is with Charlies Angels when you hit play at the end of the procedure, it goes directly to the menu and then you choose play. I tried accessing the special features but it went straight to the region map!!

Procedure:

Insert disk...when you get region map hit Pbc off then Pbc on...then quickly/simultaneously hit enter/play and stop...the screen will display Press Play to Continue...then press Play/enter...as the beginning of the disk starts hit Scene and then play/enter...The movie plays normally without
pauses between chapters." MBadd