I am upgrading a PHP application from an older 5.4 version to the latest 8.3.8 using PDO SQLSrv to connect to my database. I have a timestamp data type in the database to check if a record has been modified prior to the user submitting their version of the data (preventing concurrent updates).

The below code when run on 5.4 will correctly return a string similar to 00000000009FA279, however PHP 8.3.8 using the same settings returns a weird looking string A�. Any help on resolving this is appreciated.

$db = new PDO("sqlsrv:Server=MyServer;Database=MyDatabase", 'MyUser', 'MyPassword', array(PDO::SQLSRV_ATTR_ENCODING => PDO::SQLSRV_ENCODING_SYSTEM));
$stmt = $db->prepare('SELECT [timestamp] FROM MyTable WHERE Id= 1');
$stmt->execute();
$row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
print_r($row);

If I get the metadata for the column, PDO correctly says it is a timestamp

Array
(
    [flags] => 0
    [sqlsrv:decl_type] => timestamp
    [native_type] => string
    [table] => 
    [pdo_type] => 2
    [name] => timestamp
    [len] => 8
    [precision] => 0
)

For clarification, I am looking specifically at the SQL timestamp data type and not a date/time timestamp.