'True Blood' premieres on Sunday (thank goodness, a girl can't survive on teasers and ever-longer clips alone), but a lucky group will get a double dose of Season 4 an entire seven days before everyone else.

Starting Sunday night immediately after the Season 4 premiere, HBO will make the second episode available to subscribers with HBO Go, the network's online/iPad/smartphone streaming service.

Last week, HBO launched a new service called "HBO Go". If you subscribe to the network through your cable system, you can now access a deep offering of its content - about 600 hours so far - on your computer.

As soon as the average hotel wireless speed improves from "AOL 1997" to something more akin to what I have at home, HBO Go is going to make my life on the road much less boring. Goodbye drinking myself to sleep at the Des Moines Holiday Inn! Hello 'Entourage'! (And , uh, drinking myself to sleep).

Happy as I am about the new service, ever since it was announced something has really been pissing me off: The way HBO Go is currently configured helps the cable companies screw over their customers.

Everyone seems to be putting a lot of money into online video: Hulu, Epix (from Paramount, MGM, and Lionsgate), and our own SlashControl, to name a few. It's the future! Now another company is getting into the web act, HBO (or Home Box Office, which no one calls it anymore). They have a new service coming up with the catchy name HBO GO (unlike the other video sites you will only be able to access HBO's stuff).

Ben Parr at Mashable makes a good point when he says that if GO only goes to HBO subscribers and no one else, it's only going to be a niche thing. He suggests that HBO open some parts of it to everyone (with advertising) and then have other features and videos that are only available to HBO subscribers.

This has actually been in the works for a while. We first reported on it back in 2006.

[via Pop Candy]