diff --git a/mod/hotpot/view.php b/mod/hotpot/view.php
index 5275a678c33..aaba7e14765 100644
--- a/mod/hotpot/view.php
+++ b/mod/hotpot/view.php
@@ -426,10 +426,23 @@
 				break;
 			} // end switch $framename
 		break;
-		default:
-			// HOTPOT_NAVIGATION_BUTTONS
-			// HOTPOT_NAVIGATION_GIVEUP
-			// HOTPOT_NAVIGATION_NONE
+        case HOTPOT_NAVIGATION_GIVEUP:
+            // replace charset , if necessary
+            // HotPots are plain ascii (iso-8859-1) with unicode chars encoded as HTML entities
+            $charset = get_string("thischarset");
+            if ($charset == 'iso-8859-1') {
+                // do nothing
+            } else {
+                $hp->html = preg_replace(
+                    '|<meta[^>]*charset=iso-8859-1[^>]*>|is', 
+                    '<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset='.$charset.'" />', 
+                    $hp->html
+                );
+            }
+            // no break (continue to print html to browser)
+        default:
+            // HOTPOT_NAVIGATION_BUTTONS
+            // HOTPOT_NAVIGATION_NONE
 			if (!empty($available_msg)) {
 				$hp->insert_message('<!-- BeginTopNavButtons -->', $available_msg);
 			}