Televisions and VCRs sold in the US, Canada, and Japan use NTSC instead of PAL. Multi-standard VCRs are hard to come by here; if you want one, you may have to find an international video store in your area, or order it online.
DVD region coding is just a nasty trick to prevent you from playing imported discs, so the manufacturer can charge different prices in different markets, release the movie later, or censor the movies for a certain market. There’s no technical reason that a UK disc shouldn’t play on a US player, other than one number on the disc that says “only play in this region”. In fact, many DVD players can be “hacked” to play foreign discs, usually by entering a secret code with the remote, or by installing a new chip inside the device.
With a computer DVD-ROM drive, it’s even easier. Some combinations of hardware and software will allow you to play discs from any region. Many drives will let you change the region code, but usually only a few times before the region code gets “locked in”. If you have two DVD-ROM drives, you can set one for Region 1 and the other for Region 2.