I don't have an answer for you, but I've done a fair amount of research into this problem. Python converts all output (including system calls) to the same character as the terminal it is running in. Windows terminals use code pages for character mapping; the default code page is 437, but it can be changed with the chcp command. chcp 65001 will theoretically change the code page to utf-8, but as far as I know python doesn't know what to do with this, so you're SOL.
