So firmware upgrade time had finally come knocking.
Luckily both my drives are LiteOn and I found a fantastic FAQ on the LiteOn brand of optical drives.
Some firmware upgrades come as their own EXE file which does everything for you, while some are binary files that must be applied with a third party program. Namely, LtnFw. The bonus of this program is that it lets you backup your existing firmware.
Firmware for the LiteOn drives available in various places.
And as recent rulings by the courts in Australia made re-zoning your DVD player legal, I took the opportunity to patch my drives to remove their zoning restrictions using LtnRpc.
I decided not to mess with my old 4 speed and force it to be 8 speed, as was available in one hacked patch. It wasn't worth the risk.
FYI the patching to the latest firmware fixed my problem.