[ale] OT: DVD video format 'Newbie' question

[John Mills]

ALErs -

If I have a commercially issued, but non-US, DVD of a movie, what video 
could I expect my DVD player to deliver to my TV?

More specifically: I understand from Wikipedia that the DVD encoding is 
likely one of two screen geometries recorded as MPEG-2, but that video 
frame resolution may be basically any of the 'native' TV resolutions: 
NTSC, PAL, or whatever.

Would a US consumer-grade DVD player convert or present the recorded film 
with the appropriate resolution for a US analog TV (in this case using the 
3 'RCA' jacks: video, audio left, audio right), or would it simply decode 
and pass the recorded video and audio along expecting the TV's video sync 
to figure it out?

Background:
I have a friend with a big stack of classic Arabic movies on DVD and my 
very basic, old, "brand-X" DVD player doesn't play them. (It doesn't play 
any of my home-made copies either.) The DVDs play fine on a computer.

How about playing them on the computer and displaying to the large-screen 
US analog TV?

How about playing VCDs (same questions)?

Elaborations and notes of practical issues welcome.

TIA.

  - Mills