I really never had this kind of problem. The gods must like me more than you!

Ok, so for bad sectors, there's the "DVD read ahead" setting, right in the very first settings window. The problem is root is needed to skip bad sector is you read the small print. That should help, if you're willing, but I wouldn't blame you if you didn't.
Of course, the only guy complaining about "Linux hassle" has to suffer the said hassle. But I swear, I never had such issues with k9copy.
But then my friend has trouble reading some m4v file under win7, but my own win7 box reads the same file just fine. This is just a Linux based weirdness. Computers tend to create mysteries as the behavior is different from system to system.
I do admit the existence of a "linux hassle", and conceed you the victory. S... happens I guess.