That's great, but I don't understand what having an American DVD player has to do with it.
DVDs are regionally encoded.
DVDs meant for the US will not play in DVD players in Europe/Asia/Africa etc.
However, if you have a US made DVD player, it will play DVDs for the US region (region 1).
Lots of DVDs are only released for the US, or are released much earlier in the US than in other countries. The Heroes DVDs are an example.
DVD Region Coding
An American TV is required to go along with this, since a different analog display system (NTSC) is used in the US and some other places vs. most of Europe. The American DVD player will send out an NTSC signal, so an American TV is required to display the signal.
NTSC in US and some other regions vs
PAL in much of Europe, including the UK
BrianIs
AtYou