diff --git a/CHANGELOG b/CHANGELOG
index e135eb644..0c4303b45 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG
+++ b/CHANGELOG
@@ -5,10 +5,9 @@ Changes between 1.0.0 and 1.0.1
   nose-style function/method/generator setup/teardown and 
   tries to report functions correctly. 
 
-* unicode fixes: capturing and unicode writes to sys.stdout 
-  (through e.g a print statement) now work within tests, 
-  they are encoded as "utf8" by default, also terminalwriting 
-  was adapted and somewhat unified between windows and linux 
+* capturing of unicode writes to sys.stdout/err work better within
+  encoded as "utf8" by default, also terminalwriting was adapted 
+  and somewhat unified between windows and linux 
 
 * improved documentation layout and content a lot
 
diff --git a/py/test/plugin/pytest_capture.py b/py/test/plugin/pytest_capture.py
index e43aa8559..2b985556e 100644
--- a/py/test/plugin/pytest_capture.py
+++ b/py/test/plugin/pytest_capture.py
@@ -110,8 +110,8 @@ class CaptureManager:
     def _maketempfile(self):
         f = py.std.tempfile.TemporaryFile()
         newf = py.io.dupfile(f) 
-        f.close()
-        return ustream(newf)
+        encoding = getattr(newf, 'encoding', None) or "UTF-8"
+        return EncodedFile(newf, encoding)
 
     def _makestringio(self):
         return py.std.StringIO.StringIO() 
@@ -269,12 +269,21 @@ class CaptureFuncarg:
         self.capture.reset()
         del self.capture
 
-def ustream(f):
-    import codecs
-    encoding = getattr(f, 'encoding', None) or "UTF-8"
-    reader = codecs.getreader(encoding)
-    writer = codecs.getwriter(encoding)
-    srw = codecs.StreamReaderWriter(f, reader, writer)
-    srw.encoding = encoding
-    return srw 
+class EncodedFile(object):
+    def __init__(self, _stream, encoding):
+        self._stream = _stream 
+        self.encoding = encoding 
+       
+    def write(self, obj):
+        if isinstance(obj, unicode):
+            self._stream.write(obj.encode(self.encoding))
+        else:
+            self._stream.write(obj)
+
+    def writelines(self, linelist):
+        data = ''.join(linelist)
+        self.write(data)
+
+    def __getattr__(self, name):
+        return getattr(self._stream, name)
 
diff --git a/py/test/plugin/test_pytest_capture.py b/py/test/plugin/test_pytest_capture.py
index 298764963..4e07750ae 100644
--- a/py/test/plugin/test_pytest_capture.py
+++ b/py/test/plugin/test_pytest_capture.py
@@ -1,8 +1,7 @@
 import py, os, sys
-from py.__.test.plugin.pytest_capture import CaptureManager, ustream
+from py.__.test.plugin.pytest_capture import CaptureManager, EncodedFile
 
 class TestCaptureManager:
-
     def test_configure_per_fspath(self, testdir):
         config = testdir.parseconfig(testdir.tmpdir)
         assert config.getvalue("capture") is None
@@ -57,7 +56,7 @@ class TestCaptureManager:
 @py.test.mark.multi(method=['fd', 'sys'])
 def test_capturing_unicode(testdir, method):
     testdir.makepyfile("""
-        # taken from issue 227 from nosests 
+        # taken from issue 227 from nosetests
         def test_unicode():
             import sys
             print sys.stdout
@@ -68,14 +67,27 @@ def test_capturing_unicode(testdir, method):
         "*1 passed*"
     ])
 
-def test_ustream_helper(testdir):
+@py.test.mark.multi(method=['fd', 'sys'])
+def test_capturing_bytes_in_utf8_encoding(testdir, method):
+    testdir.makepyfile("""
+        def test_unicode():
+            print '\\xe2'
+    """)
+    result = testdir.runpytest("--capture=%s" % method)
+    result.stdout.fnmatch_lines([
+        "*1 passed*"
+    ])
+
+def test_UnicodeFile(testdir):
     p = testdir.makepyfile("hello")
     f = p.open('w')
-    #f.encoding = "utf8"
-    x = ustream(f)
-    x.write(u'b\\00f6y')
-    x.close()
-    
+    pf = EncodedFile(f, "UTF-8")
+    pf.write(u'b\\00f6y\n')
+    pf.write('b\\00f6y\n')
+    pf.close()
+    assert f.closed
+    lines = p.readlines()
+    assert lines[0] == lines[1]
 
 def test_collect_capturing(testdir):
     p = testdir.makepyfile("""