ATI AIW card doesn't see VCR menu
 

Should an AIW 9800 card connected via S-Video to a JVC HM-DR10000 show a "realtime" representation of the menu screen?
When running mmc 9.02 I can see the blue screen showing the input (i.e S1) at first but if I select the menu button or change the channel on the VCR the screen doesn't change until I flick through the inputs. I seem to be able to capture video ok (albeit with the issues reported elsewhere).

Is this normal or does it indicate a problem with the setup?

Q; Should an AIW 9800 card connected via S-Video to a JVC HM-DR10000 show a "realtime" representation of the menu screen?
A: Yes.

Something in the signal is confusing the ATI.
Do you have a TBC between the VCR and the ATI. If not, it's false copy protection. And why you need at TBC. Freezing is a symptom of "protection" (anti-copy, articial video or timebase errors).

There isn't a TBC in place at the moment, I'm holding back from buying one due to concerns that I can find a reliable source in the UK and ways of testing for a good unit (I'm likely to go for a AVT-8710). Looks like I'm going to have to "bite the bullet" though and see if some of these problems go away with one.
Since it came out of storage I recently relocated this ATI card from a self built machine into a Dell Precision 360 (on paper a better PC) and don't recall seeing this problem with the previous machine, can ATI card performance change so significantly between PCs?

Yes. I've had this happen a few times in the past 12 years. Not often, but a few.

Just an update on this in case it's of use to anyone; using an external TBC solved this problem amongst others.