How do you define "forever"? What kind of computer are you using? It depends on the settings and the source material. If I use the default "Normal" preset in Handbrake, I can rip most DVDs in around 15 minutes on my 2013 i7 MacBook Air. If I use the Apple TV preset, it takes longer, maybe a half hour. More often than not, I can't see much difference in quality on my Apple TV however.
I also have a 2008 2.4ghz Core2Duo MacBook Pro. Now it really does take forever to rip a DVD on that machine. The same DVD that rips in 15 minutes on the MacBook Air takes over an hour on the old MacBook Pro. Handbrake has evidently been optimized to use the turbo mode on the i-series CPUs.
I started ripping my large DVD collection about two years ago and am almost finished. I have about 600 movies and 500 TV shows, all ripped with Handbrake. I use IDentify to add the metadate.