‘True Blood’ Season 2 Blu-ray and Social Media

A little more on the social media value built into the new Blu-ray version of True Blood Season 2

HBO Video’s May 25th release of True Blood: The Complete Second Season isn’t the first Blu-ray Disc to include Facebook and Twitter features. But it may be the best.

The discs allow users to post to Twitter and Facebook in real-time while watching episodes and even select certain scenes to post to Facebook. Conversely, up-to-the-minute “True Blood” Facebook page and Twitter news can be fed into the discs while fans are watching.

“Our ‘True Blood’ fans are so active on Facebook that it made a lot of sense to connect BD Live to Facebook,” said Sofia Chang, SVP of marketing for HBO Video. “By providing such a robust experience as we did on ‘True Blood’ Live Feed, we engage those fans on a deeper and personalized level while simultaneously allowing them to share it all with their friends.”

Additionally, the more a fan watches the season, the more easter eggs and virtual gifts they can earn.

There’s more: While watching the series, users can decide which “True Blood” group they wish to join, including Vampire, Fellowship of the Sun and Follower of Dionysus. The viewing experience is then tailored to that group.

Lastly, hardcore fans can use a picture of themselves that can be transformed based on the “True Blood” group they select. For those that choose Vampire, the more they watch, the more pale (and bloody) the picture gets.

Blu-ray exclusive features:
-Character Perspectives: Learn more about what's going on straight from the mouths of Hoyt, Pam, Karl, and Steve Newlin
-Flashback/Flash Forward: Move through time in the world of Bon Temps. Flashback to relive pivotal moments or Flash Forward to reveal the significance of a certain scene
-Pro/Anti-Vampire Feeds: Receive news updates and information from both organizations throughout the episode and decide which camp you support
-Hints/FYI: Don't miss a beat with these FYI trivia facts and show hints and clues
Also includes:
-The Vampire Report (Special Edition): Check out the past year's biggest stories in vampire news, politics, and popular culture in the special edition of The Perspective with Victoria Davis
-Fellowship of the Sun: Reflections of Light: Rules to live by with Fellowship of the Sun leaders Steve and Sarah Newlin
-Seven audio commentaries with the cast and crew, including Alan Ball, Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, Michelle Forbes, Alexander Skarsgard, Rutina Wesley, Ryan Kwanten, Sam Trammell, and many more

True Blood Season 2 Blu-ray includes social networks

The new True Blood Season 2 Blu-ray Disc has a social networking feature that fans of the HBO series can really sink their teeth into: automatic updates to their Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Described as the most extensive Facebook-linking feature in a Blu-ray Disc so far, the True Blood Live Feed sends updates to Facebook and Twitter as viewers watch the episodes. Each of the 12 episodes has at least eight scenes that can be posted to Facebook, too, direct from the discs.

One of HBO's most popular series, True Blood averaged 5 million viewers per first-run episode. The tale of vampires and other supernatural happenings in the Louisiana bayou has more than 1.5 million friends on Facebook, which now has a countdown to the June 13 third-season premiere.

"For True Blood, we have such engaged and passionate fans that we really wanted to provide them with a way to extend the fiction beyond what they see in the show," says HBO's Sofia Chang, "and share that passion with their friends."

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True Blood Season 2 DVD review from the Washington POst

Anna Paquin has a great Southern accent. The actress, who was born in Canada and grew up in New Zealand, manages to incorporate a regional twang in her dialogue as Sookie Stackhouse, the heroine of the HBO series "True Blood," without it sounding labored or exaggerated. In fact, it sounds less like a Hollywood version of a Southern accent than the real thing itself.

That's just one of the reasons why Paquin makes such a good heroine for this deep-fried soap opera, and why "True Blood" is so much more than simply another entry in the exsanguinated vampire trend. Better than "Twilight" (the movies and the books), better than "The Vampire Diaries," the series may trade on its Southern setting for a few laughs, but it never disdains its characters, their predicaments or any of its potentially silly fantastical elements, from vampires to the churches that arise to combat them.

The first season was a surprise hit for HBO, which had been struggling to find a show as popular as "The Sopranos" and "Sex in the City." On the surface, "True Blood" shouldn't work — or at least not as well as it does. Sookie, a chaste waitress who can read minds, falls in love with a 150-year-old vampire named Bill, whose Old South origins make him the model of a gentleman. And yet, it's not so much a love story as a story of love under unusual circumstances.

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