diff --git a/plugins/RSS/plugin.py b/plugins/RSS/plugin.py
index 0f8be9f0c..d05f65a5e 100644
--- a/plugins/RSS/plugin.py
+++ b/plugins/RSS/plugin.py
@@ -262,7 +262,7 @@ class RSS(callbacks.Plugin):
                 try:
                     self.log.debug('Downloading new feed from %u', url)
                     results = feedparser.parse(url)
-                    if 'bozo_exception' in results:
+                    if 'bozo_exception' in results and not results['entries']:
                         raise results['bozo_exception']
                 except feedparser.sgmllib.SGMLParseError:
                     self.log.exception('Uncaught exception from feedparser:')
diff --git a/src/utils/web.py b/src/utils/web.py
index da8d6521b..94313c900 100644
--- a/src/utils/web.py
+++ b/src/utils/web.py
@@ -189,8 +189,15 @@ class HtmlToText(HTMLParser, object):
 def htmlToText(s, tagReplace=' '):
     """Turns HTML into text.  tagReplace is a string to replace HTML tags with.
     """
-    if sys.version_info[0] >= 3 and isinstance(s, bytes):
-        s = s.decode()
+    try:
+        import chardet
+    except ImportError:
+        s = s.decode('utf8')
+    else:
+        u = chardet.universaldetector.UniversalDetector()
+        u.feed(s)
+        u.close()
+        s = s.decode(u.result['encoding'])
     x = HtmlToText(tagReplace)
     x.feed(s)
     return x.getText()