ok, i'm not sure if this works for everybody, or if it's a trick that most people know about and I just stumbled across it unknowingly, but....
i have an older pioneer dvd 305s 10x scsi dvd reader. it has always ripped pressed dvds (retail, region 1) at a locked rate of 1.5x. there was nothing i could do about it. updated the firmware to region-free RPC1 1.05 version in hopes that maybe there'd be some improvement, but there wasn't. oh well, such is life. however, purely by accident one day, i put the computer in hibernation mode (winxp, sp1). after coming out of hibernation mode i proceeded to start ripping off a dvd (the rookie) and low and behold, the 305s was flying! it was ripping it off at a rate that fluctuated between 6-8x with dvd decryptor 3.1.4.0. i forget the final avg read rate but i was stunned. i put in another movie (band of brothers, vol2) and the same thing happened. i just did it again after having rebooted my pc, i put it in hibernation mode and brought it back out and i just ripped off the "blade" movie, entire dvd using file mode at an avg read rate of 6.0x and a max of 8.4x. it ripped 7.29gb in 15m38s. unreal. it has never allowed a rip past 1.5x on pressed media ever.
is this something anyone else has ever done? did i just stumble onto a trick people have known about forever? is this trick working because it's a scsi drive, because my dru-500a still reads at 2.0x after hibernation? i'm curious as to whether or not this is common...