According to reports on various forums in Europe and Australia (oprobably elsewhere too) the downloaded and burned to CD new fw2.7 for the US XA2 will also work for European and Australian XE1 players (if they've already been updated to XE fw2.5).
According to the people who've tried, the XE1 keeps it R2 (or R4 if Australian) status for SD DVD, or the R0 status for the ones who've made it region free.

G68, 558, F80.