> Ok, wrote the program to save to disk and then reload a temporary text
> blob with the file from disk. Still no luck.
>
> So.. since I had the files on disk, I did as Helen recommended and
> opened the file with Notepad and clicked "Save As" and the encoding on
> these files is Unicode.
>
> What now?
>
>

I see nothing in the content of the file you have shown (assuming other
files are of the same nature) that would require unicode.
But only you - or the supplier of these files really knows why they have
been created in unicode.
You can either convert them, or try storing them in a text blob which is
defined as unicode. But if you do not have a need for unicode then I would
stay away from it.
You say you wrote them to disk... does that mean you got them back out of
the bunary blobs to store them to disk? or are you saying you have the
originals? So does this mean the originals were created unicode? or that
your export from binary has resulted in unicode?
Alan