confused about saving html into database

[eluser]sessions[/eluser]
I have a project that saves html into a mysql database. Usually <pre>, <code> and <p>. Inserting and Updating the db worked fine locally. Once I moved the project to a GD hosted account I get a '406 Not Acceptable' error when I attempt to update or insert content that includes opening or closing html brackets < >:

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Not Acceptable

An appropriate representation of the requested resource /index.php/manage/addedit could not be found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

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If I removed the < and > from content being inserted/updated it works fine. I thought this was an encoding problem. I did find that my local database was set to utf8_unicode_ci whereas the GD live database was set to latin1_swedish_ci. I changed the live db charaset to utf8_unicode_ci but same problem.

What other checks should I make to successfully update/insert html brackets ( < > ) into the db?