It depends on how it was encoded. If you merely burned it to a DVD as data in .avi format, then chances are that your regular commercial DVD player cannot read it as they do not contain the software to be able to read .avi. You will need to burn it to a DVD in the MPEG-2 format which is what most normal DVD players read.
Use any program like Nero that has the option to "Burn DVD." This means that all you need to do is add the file and it will generally do the converting for you.