If there was any fear that Halloween night might have hurt ratings for The Walking Dead‘s opening episode, they can now be dispelled.

An estimated 5.3 million people tuned in and a cumulative viewership of 8.1 million for the 11:30pm and 1am rebroadcasts of the new AMC series — making it the highest delivery of any cable show premiere in 2010, according to the studio.

Clearly people loved what they saw and with AMC pairing the show with its Fearfest horror movie marathon, I’d be shocked if those numbers didn’t hold steady for following weeks as well.

And for those of you who are part of movie and television check-in service Miso, you may have noticed that The Walking Dead took the first and fourth highest spots on their trending programs list last night. (This is because there were two options to check in for this show.) The super viewing majority killed the number two trending program, which was game 4 of the World Series.

Check out the television ratings highlights after the jump and tell us what you thought of the episode.

Syfy’s cylontastic hour-long drama Caprica returns to the network tonight to finish out the second half of its season, which is said to be filled with multiple robot-sentient Zoe Graystones and more screen time for James Marsters‘ character Barnabas Greeley.

We’re just doing our duty as geek journalists by reminding everyone who didn’t catch our earlier post [Read:“˜Caprica’ Returning To SyFy Early, Oct. 5 Premiere].

So, consider this your official notice to do the following:

I’m a big fan of apps that let you share what you’re watching with all your social networks. Miso and GetGlue are the two that I use on a regular basis to let all my Twitter followers know when I’m watching the latest episode of Mad Men or the newest release at my local theater. Now, a newcomer has entered my social platforming orbit.

The service is called ScreenTribe and while it’s similar to the previous apps I mentioned, it also sets itself apart from the crowd in many ways.

Aside from allowing you to let everyone know what you’re watching, ScreenTribe also lets you compete with other users and earn physical prizes in the process. “Tuning in” to content earns players points that can be redeemed for real life rewards like gift cards, movie tickets, and non-profit charity donations. Users are also rewarded with badges when they complete special tasks like tuning in for the first time or watching a certain number of movies from one era.

I am one of the few people among my acquaintances that is utterly uninterested in using location-based check-in services like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places. When I’m out and about I tend to make a solid effort to experience the real world, since I’m usually sitting at home watching movies or television shows.

Miso — a service that’s been described as Foursquare for couch potatoes — makes perfect sense to me. It allows for users to “check-in” when they are watching a movie, television show, or web program (such as the entire lineup from Revision3). And just like Foursquare, users can attain special badges for checking in often or for specific shows.

You can comment on each show, see what your friends are watching or have been watching, and basically it allows you to share the experience with others in a unique way that wouldn’t bother anyone not watching.