Let me say this a slightly different way, when you play a move straight from a BluRay disc, that thing will turn at 1x, it won't turn any faster, because 1x is the normal speed to deliver you the picture. The extra speed of an optical drive can provide is really for DATA (as already mentioned), what data? ever used an optical to backup an HD?
Ripping will benefit from a faster drive, takes less time to rip, DUH! will affect quality? ABSOLUTELY ZERO. Straight ripping does no video processing, all it's doing it reading stuff form the disc (as data) and writing it to the HD, making a slight format conversion which takes no processing power whatsoever. Now AFTER you finish ripping and THEN you want to convert to another video format (people want to do this to save space) THEN we are talking another ball of wax but still nothing to do with optical drive speed has anything to do with video quality.
Once again summarize: optical speed has NOTHING to do with video quality. Optical speed just saves you time by ripping, copying faster, THAT'S ALL.