I had to join the forum because this has been bugging me for months and never once thought it was the player I use or the USB it's plugged into. I've been having this problem on both MPC-HC and VLC with the exact same drive, also had Windows Explorer freeze, and then both MPC-HC and VLC will freeze if I open them right away without waiting a while. I managed to fix it and so far haven't had any freezes.
What I did was
- Open Device Manager
- Click on PIONEER BD-RW BDR-UD04 USB device
- Up top click View > Devices by Connection
- Then right click > Properties on the USB input it was plugged into, for me it was USB Mass Storage Device
- Go to the Power Management tab
- Turn off "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" and click Ok
and that seems to be it, if it freezes again then I know it's something else but so far nothing I've watched has frozen.