Paramount is heading straight for the gross-out gang’s core audience by deploying “Jackass 2.5″ online, starting Wednesday with exclusive streaming on Blockbuster’s Movielink.

A week later it’s on to DVD and paid download services such as Amazon and iTunes. Online rentals start Jan. 1.

Blockbuster shareholders will be delighted to hear the rental giant reportedly paid $2 million for this chance to spotlight its movie download service. With a film featuring liberal ass, dick, shit and piss.

The online units of MTV and Paramount say this is first major studio movie to debut online. That’s not counting “Sicko” and “American Gangster,” both victims of major leaks to Bitstream Nation. The scheme also promos the new jacksassworld.com

“Jackass 2.5″ is just what it sounds like: outtakes and deleted scenes from “Jackass 2.” Damaged goods? Nope, this is another balls-to-the-wall effort from Johnny Knoxville and the boys. Making it about as funny as disgusting humor gets — strictly for those with the inability to be offended.

Knoxville says in the that “2.5″ is due to “my and the boys’ inability to stop shooting ‘Jackass 2.’ ” And so we have stunts such as anal-bead kite flying, fun with snapping turtles, a Russian prostate massage, a cobra-infested bed of nails, the smelly powder “poof” and the “rattlesnake salad toss.”

The best bit is fat man Preston Lacy dressed as King Kong, balancing atop an outhouse while fending off radio-controlled airplanes. His love interest is Wee Man, as Fay Wray.

In between bits, the boys talk about each stunt and how much the victim Jackass guy hated doing it. They say things like, “We filmed this atrocity … ”

Here’s Knoxville with a pitch for this major Viacom corporate initiative:

The industry watchdog DVD Copy Control Association said it will release software allowing the burned discs to be played on home system DVDs players. The content burned onto a disc cannot be daisy-chained, or copied again.

“This is great news,” CinemaNow chieftain Curt Marvis told the L.A. Times. “We expect the proliferation of burners that can burn these types of discs.”

The process of linking computers to TV screens to play movies hasn’t thrilled many consumers. Even using a device such as Apple TV, the images can look crappy and weirdly framed — good for Starwars Kid but not “Star Wars.” Presumably, the download-to-burn content will permit reproduction that’s competitive with studio DVDs.

The DVD CCA is the same bunch that enforces regional controls on DVDs, allowing distributors to control release patterns around the world. Multiregion DVD players, common overseas, are needed to override that control.

Update : Audio good guys Sonic Solutions detailed their download-burner software technology and said players should be hitting the market in the first quarter.

Movie Downloads. 100% Legal. No membership fees.

1. 300
2. The Number 23
3. Breach
4. The Hills Have Eyes 2
5. The Bourne Supremacy

Movielink’s top 5 rental downloads
(week ended Aug. 27)

1. The Last Mimzy
2. Zodiac
3. 300
4. The Number 23
5. The Contractor

“Clearly, our customers have responded favorably to having other convenient ways to access movies and entertainment,” Blockbuster chieftain James Keyes told the New York Times.

Keyes told the AP that Blockbuster could make additional acquisitions in the download business.

Blockbuster plans to run the Movielink service as a standalone and to “eventually make elements of the service available through blockbuster.com,” it said in a statement.

Blockbuster straggled into the online movie-rental business last year, going up against rent-by-mail innovator Netflix. The Movielink buy is a bid to counter Netflix’s download service.

“We have taken an important step toward being able to make movie downloading conveniently available to computers, portable devices and ultimately to the television at home,” Keyes said in the one-size-fits-all press statement.

Blockbuster also is an investor in MovieLink’s better-stocked competitor CinemaNow. The MovieLink deal comes with rights to films from the download site’s creators, the Hollywood studios Warner Bros., MGM and Paramount.

Also Wednesday, the News Corp.-NBC Universal online video venture picked up a cool $100 million from the media investors Providence Equity Partners. The so-far non-existent web site will be a home for video from Fox, NBC and the other broadcasters owned by the media companies. It also plans to host user content.

Here, Rob Pegoraro takes a shot at MovieLink and CinemaNow:

If you must obtain a movie in the next few hours but can’t leave your house or have anybody else pick up the flick, these two Windows-only stores might work. Otherwise, it’s unclear who would bother with them: They stock far too few movies, charge too much for them, offer them at a quality inferior to any DVD and grossly restrict your use of these purchases.

But, he allows:

Movielink is less annoying than CinemaNow, but not by much.

And the kicker:

Collectively, these sites amount to the most hostile movie-procurement option since the video store in Kevin Smith’s comedy “Clerks” (which, by the way, you can’t rent or buy at either site).

The movie downloading business has some serious PR campaigns to wage — most of the coverage I read is either clueless or hostile.

From setup to signup, to selecting a title and starting the show with a press of the remote’s play button, the Xbox 360 is simple. It is as easy to use as the on-demand and pay-per-view services familiar to most watchers of cable or satellite TV. … But at $400 for the model that includes a hard disk, which is needed to download movies, the Xbox is a big investment. If you aren’t a gamer, it is hard to justify spending that amount just to watch a few movies.

Writer Joe Hutsko notes that Xbox Live has 165 titles available for “rental.” A Microsoft spokesman vows there would be at least a title every day added to the service. The Xbox 360 elite, due this winter with its 120-gig hard drive, will make more video-related activities possible.

The story is pretty basic but a decent roundup of movie download options. It goes through the alternatives — the usual suspects such as MovieLink, CinemaNow, Vongo, the Unbox and the only Mac-friendly system, Apple TV.

There are scores of alternatives, but at this stage the movie selection is a factor for each one. Steve Swasey, a Netflix spokesman, said: “Whether it’s Netflix or Apple or Amazon or Wal-Mart.com, we’re all facing the same constraint: title availability.”

Not mentioned is the other advantage to the Xbox 360: its ability to play HD DVD movies. The format is on the run from Blu-ray, but this should be handy for a couple of more years anyway. The add-on HD DVD player, which I own, is cheap in all respects, but once you get it going, the high-definition magic does its thing.

ThinkFilm’s DVD version of the 2006 film came out Tuesday. Acts include Paul McCartney, Radiohead, Björk, David Bowie, the Killers, Blur, R.E.M. and the White Stripes.

After the two-week freebie, the “Glastonbury” download will set you back $19.99. The performances will be available as a package for $15, or individual artists for $1.99. The free downloads begin the day after this year’s festival wraps.