--- Schema.pm.orig	2011-08-15 14:55:40.000000000 +0100
+++ Schema.pm	2012-01-15 17:35:38.000000000 +0000
@@ -37,6 +37,7 @@
 use Storable;
 use Tie::Cache::LRU::Expires;
 use URI;
+use Encode qw(encode decode);
 
 use Slim::Formats;
 use Slim::Player::ProtocolHandlers;
@@ -2538,8 +2539,20 @@
 	for my $c ( @{$rawcomments} ) {
 		next unless defined $c;
 		
-		# Bug 15630, ignore strings which have the utf8 flag on but are in fact invalid utf8
-		next if utf8::is_utf8($c) && !Slim::Utils::Unicode::looks_like_utf8($c);
+		# Bug 15630, 17863. Sanitize strings which have the utf8 flag on but are in fact invalid utf8
+		if (utf8::is_utf8($c)) {
+			# Round trips the potentially invalid string, eliminating malformed characters
+
+			# encode("utf8", $c) regenerates the original octets, and should always succeed
+			# decode("UTF-8",$octets,Encode::FB_DEFAULT) generates a valid string, replacing any malformed
+			# characters with a substitution character.
+
+			$c = decode("UTF-8",encode("utf8", $c),Encode::FB_DEFAULT);
+
+		} else {
+			# for completeness, attempts to catch case should string contain non-ascii octets.
+			$c = Slim::Utils::Unicode::utf8decode($c);
+		}
 
 		#ignore SoundJam and iTunes CDDB comments, iTunSMPB, iTunPGAP
 		if ($c =~ /SoundJam_CDDB_/ ||