Category "decode"

IonCube php encoder [duplicate]

i have a client that need some php changes, but is scripts are encoded by ioncube "//004ff // IONCUBE ENCODER 7.0 EVALUATION // THIS LICENSE M

UnicodeDecodeError, invalid continuation byte

Why is the below item failing? Why does it succeed with "latin-1" codec? o = "a test of \xe9 char" #I want this to remain a string as this is what I am receivin