Use of BLOB - 2 bytes short

[Montgomery]

I am trying to load remote web pages and store them in a database (MySql) for future use.
I use fopen and fread, and write them out as a BLOB field. (addslashes to)
When I then access these pages .txt documents are OK, but .html ones are 2 bytes/characters shorter.

Any ideas ?

PHP version 4. Any other way to determine when a web page changes please feel free to show me.

Thanks in advance.
Iain