My DVD player is broken and my only TVs are a dumb TV (RCA inputs & coaxial inputs only) or a Colby monitor that accepts RCA & HDMI

I have movies on USB thumb drives I'd like to play on either TV, do I have any options (I guess adapter-wise)

I don't want to shell out for a smart TV and half my DVDs are bad anyway so a DVD player doesn't make sense

 

Will they play on your computer? If so use a video card with RCA output in your computer. If you have a HDMI output on your computer you can use a converter to RCA.

 

hmm, I only have usb & firewire on my computer and the only external card I have is firewire but I think the monitor may also have firewire so this could work, lemme try that

 

Try searching online for "USB to RCA adapter".

 

Ok so the Monitor only has rca, hdmi, "monitor video", and s-video

My computer has usb and "monitor video"

I'm assuming I can get a cable to go from the PC to the monitor but then the question is how does the monitor "pick up" whatever's playing on my PC, say via windows media player,is it automatic?

 

The monitor will have different inputs available you can toggle through on the screen. Some monitors will detect that something is available on a particular input and select it for you.

 

And, some monitors if it sees more than one input it will pop-up a menu asking you which you want to use.

 

I found another DVD player, an internal DVD burner but the external bracket is firewire. Do they make either and RCA or HDMI bracket to house an internal DVD burner/player?

 

Well, what I've done in your situation, is play the movies on a smart phone, and output them to the
TV over the HDMI. This does require a newer cell phone.

What I have done is, get two usb adapters, one is an OTG (On The Go) adapter,
lets my phone read usb thumb drives or usb hard dives.
The other is a HDMI adapter, lets the phone use a HDMI monitor for video and audio.

I've got a multi gig micro-sd card in the phone.
So, process isn't bad, plug usb thumb drive into adapter, connect USB to phone, copy movie to phone.
Plug phone into HDMI input on home theater system, play movie through phone.

 

An RCA to HDMI or RCA to VGA or HDMI to VGA (or vice versa) adapter is a box, not just a cable.

A tri-RCA (component video) connection gives a much higher quality picture than a single RCA (composite video; yellow) connection.

You will want to be sure that the phone does not use up your anytime minutes when you play movies on it.

 

No, it's really just a cable.
The setup for the OP would be
phone micro usb port -> usb to HDMI adapter -> hdmi cable to Colby monitor.

The proper terms is MHL adapter.

Other neat trick, it basically turns your phone into a sort of chromecast-dongle
so you can stream video, playback youtube etc.

The OP might need a different phone able for copying the movie files from the the USB drive to the phone, but it you have a wifi network, I'd simply copy the movies to the phone via wifi.
Actually, even simpler, copy the movies from the usb drive to a shared drive on a computer, then stream the video through the phone- VLC player for android works nicely on that, it will stream most movies, while the standard android play will often want to download the entire movie before playing.

There are some phones that will work with a mega adapter that lets you plug in
usb drives, and output to HDMI at the same time.