There are lot of brands and models of DVD drives that do a pretty good job playing DVD movies and ripping, but one drive that I recommend and have good experience using is LiteOn 16X DVD-ROM drive. First of all, the LiteOn spins at very low RPMs (about 1X) during movies playback. This gives almost silent operation in comparison to other brands which run at full spindle speeds while playing DVD movies. Also, the LiteOn has one of the quickest digital audio extraction performance among all DVD and CD-ROM drives. I believe it should also do the same good job in DVD ripping.
Most DVD drives are set to (or will be set to, after 5 times of change) the region that the users are in. Some drives, like LiteOn's, allows users to patch the firmware to make them region free.