having had my pioneer 106 for a few months now i have to say i was dissapointed with the ripping speed then by complete fluke i think i have found a way round it. this only seems to work though if none of the files need unlocking with another program. method is use smart ripper but open the program before you have hit the button to close disk tray with dvd on it it will then come up no dvd found ok that and then hit the reload button quickly and no dvd will come up agian ok that and hit reload again and then keep doing that untill it picks up the dvd .after that rip as normal and the speed should be much faster in fact i just ripped a dvd using this method and towards the end it was reaching 12.5x . this may even work with other pioneer models though not sure about that. and saves having to mess about with the firmware which can be fatal
A highly recommended alternative would be an inexpensive DVD ROM. They read at full speed out of the box and save a tremendous amount of wear and tear on your burner
