WebClient.Encoding and diamond question marks

[Inferrd]

A StreamReader uses UTF-8 encoding by default, so you could try modifying your code slightly:

Dim myString As String ' declared here to broaden its Scope
 
Using myWebClient As New Net.WebClient()
 
    Using myStream As IO.Stream = myWebClient.OpenRead(url)
        Using sr As New IO.StreamReader(myStream, System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding("ISO-8859-1"))
            myString = sr.ReadToEnd
        End Using ' Stream
    End Using ' StreamReader
 
 
End Using ' WebClient

The WebClient.Encoding Property is used by the WebClient when it uploads or downloads Strings, so you might also try:

Dim myString As String ' declared here to broaden its Scope
 
Using myWebClient As New Net.WebClient()
    myWebClient.Encoding = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding("ISO-8859-1")
    mystring = myWebClient.DownloadString(url)
 
End Using ' WebClient

although it defaults to the system's default encoding, so you could probably get away without explicitly setting the encoding in your particular case. It's best to set it explicitly when you can, though. See the MSDN for more details, and also the Remarks section here.