diff --git a/pywb/rewrite/content_rewriter.py b/pywb/rewrite/content_rewriter.py
index b6eb8f43..a37281ae 100644
--- a/pywb/rewrite/content_rewriter.py
+++ b/pywb/rewrite/content_rewriter.py
@@ -298,9 +298,10 @@ class StreamingRewriter(object):
         try:
             buff = self.first_buff
 
+            # for html rewriting:
             # if charset is utf-8, use that, otherwise default to encode to ascii-compatible encoding
             # encoding only used for url rewriting, encoding back to bytes after rewriting
-            if rwinfo.charset == 'utf-8':
+            if rwinfo.charset == 'utf-8' and rwinfo.text_type == 'html':
                 charset = 'utf-8'
             else:
                 charset = 'iso-8859-1'
@@ -318,7 +319,15 @@ class StreamingRewriter(object):
                 if self.align_to_line:
                     buff += stream.readline()
 
-                buff = decoder.decode(buff)
+                try:
+                    buff = decoder.decode(buff)
+                except UnicodeDecodeError:
+                    if charset == 'utf-8':
+                        rwinfo.charset = 'iso-8859-1'
+                        charset = rwinfo.charset
+                        decoder = codecs.getincrementaldecoder(charset)()
+                        buff = decoder.decode(buff)
+
                 buff = self.rewrite(buff)
 
                 yield buff.encode(charset)
diff --git a/pywb/rewrite/test/test_content_rewriter.py b/pywb/rewrite/test/test_content_rewriter.py
index b89c3959..60cbd265 100644
--- a/pywb/rewrite/test/test_content_rewriter.py
+++ b/pywb/rewrite/test/test_content_rewriter.py
@@ -295,6 +295,26 @@ class TestContentRewriter(object):
 
         assert is_rw == False
 
+    def test_binary_wrong_content_type_html(self):
+        headers = {'Content-Type': 'text/html; charset=utf-8'}
+        content = b'\xe9\x11\x12\x13\x14'
+        headers, gen, is_rw = self.rewrite_record(headers, content, ts='201701mp_')
+
+        assert ('Content-Type', 'text/html; charset=utf-8') in headers.headers
+
+        assert is_rw == True
+        assert b''.join(gen) == content
+
+    def test_binary_wrong_content_type_css(self):
+        headers = {'Content-Type': 'text/css; charset=utf-8'}
+        content = b'\xe9\x11\x12\x13\x14'
+        headers, gen, is_rw = self.rewrite_record(headers, content, ts='201701cs_')
+
+        assert ('Content-Type', 'text/css; charset=utf-8') in headers.headers
+
+        assert is_rw == True
+        assert b''.join(gen) == content
+
     def test_binary_dechunk(self):
         headers = {'Content-Type': 'application/octet-stream',
                    'Transfer-Encoding': 'chunked'}