ruby `encode': "xC3" from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 (Encoding::UndefinedConversionError)

Question

Hannibal episodes in tvdb have weird characters in them.

For example:

?uf

So ruby spits out:

./manifesto.rb:19:in `encode': "xC3" from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 (Encoding::UndefinedConversionError)
    from ./manifesto.rb:19:in `to_json'
    from ./manifesto.rb:19:in `<main>'

Line 19 is:

puts @tree.to_json

Is there a way to deal with these non utf characters? I'd rather not replace them, but convert them? Or ignore them? I don't know, any help appreciated.

Weird part is that script works fine via cron. Manually running it creates error.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23309669/ruby-encode-xc3-from-ascii-8bit-to-utf-8-encodingundefinedconversionerr