I noticed that the date of the article was April Fool's Day, FWIW. Anyway,
Most DVD players and similar consumer electronics usually have power supplies that can accept any powerline between 100V to 250V 50 or 60Hz. Usually a switching power supply that automatically adjusts itself to whatever line voltage it finds itself supplied with. This allows China to ship the same product to anywhere in the world, and all they need do is supply a detachable power cord with the destination's power plug. This means that that DVD player should have had no problem with 120V vs 240V. Another issue would be the British video signal is PAL (25 frames a second) and America used NTSC (30 frames a second), but a TV set shouldn't burn out with the wrong signal.
It was probably just a bad plug adapter (bad contact making it hot and catch smoke).
