Well, I thought I'd update everybody on the state of my Knit King PPD (programmer) that came from the UK. I bought a USB tuner/adapter that an American lady got working: an ATI TV Wonder HD750 which comes with a host of little adapters and a dinky antenna, as well as Arcsoft TotalMedia 3.5. I struggled for a long time (an hour?) installing the drivers on a W10 laptop. Then I spent hours more installing TotalMedia. (The installer was being prevented from running by W10.) After all that strain and pain, TotalMedia claimed it could not find a compatible adapter!
So I gave up on that W10 laptop and went to my handy/dandy W7 desktop and the software installed right away without errors, ran fine, found and controlled the adapter, and I see it works fine for local ATSC channels. The TV Wonder has an analog tuner as well, and it's an international version with about 20 different video standards that I could choose. The American lady who got this working said hers, like my wife's Knit King has a selector switch for channels 3 or 4, and it uses the PAL standard. I can scan for NTSC signals, or PAL signals, and see either channel 3 or channel 4 being sent out from the Knit King. But in no case, no matter which of about 6 or 8 PAL standards, do I actually see a picture. All I see is noise somewhat like snow.
I conclude that my TV Wonder TV tuner/adapter is working, but the Knit King PPD is semi-defunct. What a waste of time and money.