Problem with regional characters (polish) in php application and ms sql server

[sentcacpamao]

I have a problem with regional string characters inserted to MS SQL Server database. There is a PHP application that connects with mssql server and inserts some data. But instead of inserting characters such as: ?, ?, ?, ?, ? (and so on - btw. these are polish regional characters), when inserted into mssql table they appear as a, A, c, L, z. Here is some background:

• I use freetds drivers for mssql connectivity
• column type is nvarchar(MAX)
• I looked at data sent "trough wire" (with WireShark) and the UTF-8 encoded data looks ok, for example ? is sent as U+0104.
• When inserting same string into local database instance (Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition) it works fine, but on remote host (in customer location - it is Microsoft SQL Server Standard Edition 64-bit) this "de-regionalization" occurs.

It seems like this remote mssql server doesn't handle this input data sent by php application right. Can anyone see/know what can be wrong here?