diff --git a/UAS/Parser.php b/UAS/Parser.php
index 23c26f0..77112cc 100755
--- a/UAS/Parser.php
+++ b/UAS/Parser.php
@@ -47,7 +47,12 @@ class Parser
      * @type bool
      */
     protected $doDownloads = true;
-
+    /**
+     * Should this instance use zip compression while downloads
+     * Useful if use mbstring.func_overload
+     * @type bool
+     */
+    protected $useZipDownloads = true;
     /**
      * URL to fetch the full data file from.
      * @type string
@@ -452,18 +457,19 @@ protected function getContents($url, $timeout = 300)
         $starttime = microtime(true);
         // use fopen
         if (ini_get('allow_url_fopen')) {
+            $stream_options = array(
+                'http' => array(
+                    'timeout' => $timeout
+                )
+            );
+            if ($this->useZipDownloads) {
+                $stream_options['http']['header'] = "Accept-Encoding: gzip\r\n";
+            }
             $fp = @fopen(
                 $url,
                 'rb',
                 false,
-                stream_context_create(
-                    array(
-                        'http' => array(
-                            'timeout' => $timeout,
-                            'header' => "Accept-Encoding: gzip\r\n"
-                        )
-                    )
-                )
+                stream_context_create($stream_options)
             );
             if (is_resource($fp)) {
                 $data = stream_get_contents($fp);
@@ -513,9 +519,15 @@ protected function getContents($url, $timeout = 300)
                     CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => $timeout,
                     CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => $timeout,
                     CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
-                    CURLOPT_ENCODING => 'gzip'
                 )
             );
+            if ($this->useZipDownloads) {
+                curl_setopt(
+                    $ch,
+                    CURLOPT_ENCODING,
+                    'gzip'
+                );
+            }
             $data = curl_exec($ch);
             if ($data !== false and curl_errno($ch) == 0) {
                 $this->debug(
@@ -559,6 +571,14 @@ public function setCacheDir($cache_dir)
         return true;
     }
 
+    /**
+     * Set use zip compression while downloading updates.
+     * @param bool $use
+    */
+    public function setUseZipDownloads($use) {
+        $this->useZipDownloads = (bool)$use;
+    }
+
     /**
      * Get the cache directory
      * @return string