The summer of the PS3 Fitness Game drought continues, but I did want to chime in with a pretty good promotion from Amazon. This is a teeny tiny promotion that Amazon isn’t making very obvious, but it’s a good one.

On the PS3 product page, there’s a teeny banner that says:

Clicking on it takes you to a page about Amazon Instant Video, on the top of which is a teeny banner that says:

So it seems that if you register your PS3 with Amazon to start watching videos on the Amazon Instant Video application on your PS3 (which I’ll bet you didn’t know you had), you’ll get a cool $5 to use towards buying or renting a video.

The cool thing about this is that is really expands your ability to use your PS3 for fitness. How? There are a ton of exercise and fitness videos out there, most at only around $1.99 to rent or $9.99 to buy. And so while the PS3 hasn’t been graced with a Jillian Michaels video game like the Kinect or Wii (trust me, we’re not missing much), we can still have Jillian grace our PS3 screens by using one of her videos. Not to mention Bethanny, Bob, Denise, Billy, and the gazillions of others who’ve put out exercise videos. It’s the perfect antidote for the paucity of PS3 fitness games lately.

Here’s exactly how to do it.

1) On your PS3, go to TV/Video Services. You may already have a green icon there that looks like this.

If not, go to the “My Channels” icon that looks like a test pattern and select the Amazon icon.

2) Once you select the icon you may be asked to download software.

You may or may not have to install a system update. After that you’ll be asked to sign into your PS3 account. Don’t worry, you’re almost there 🙂

3) Finally, you’ll get to the main Amazon video screen.

The interface looks similar to what you’ve seen on devices like Roku, Apple TV, and Xbox LIVE.

4) Next, select the box that says “Register Your Device”. You’ll be brought to a screen showing you a 5-digit code. This code will be unique to your device.

5) Next, go www.amazon.com/mytv. If you have multiple people in your household with Amazon accounts, make sure you sign in with the account you want permanently associated with the PS3.

6) Magically, on your PS3, you’ll see a success screen.

7) Next, you’ll go through screens asking to confirm your 1-Click settings. From Amazon’s perspective, they of course want to make it as easy as possible for you to make an impulse buy :P. They’ll then try to push you to buy Amazon Prime, which actually is not a bad deal if you do a lot of ordering on Amazon. Not only do you get free 2-day shipping on all orders, you also get access to a bunch of free videos you can watch through streaming. The free videos you can watch with Amazon Prime aren’t the latest hits, of course, but there are some good ones (I watched all three seasons of Arrested Development using Amazon Prime).

8) Finally, you’ll get to the success page on Amazon.

Now here’s the annoying thing. Amazon, of course, makes it difficult to look up your promotional certificate balance. To do so, you have to choose an instant video and then look at the tiny print under the product description.

When I checked, I saw a balance of zero. Not cool.

I started a chat session. I was bracing myself for a big fight, but they were fast and very, very nice.

This is where I love Amazon. While other companies I’ve had similar issues with would argue with me, ending up costing hundred of dollars of their customer service people’s salaries to fight against me just to deny me the $5, Amazon credited it right to me, no questions asked. This is why I continue to be a loyal customer.

So your mileage may vary. A lot of people are reporting that the $5 credit is being instantly credited to them, but even if it’s not Amazon is smart enough not to deny it to you if you ask about it.

Once I registered I was able to see the videos I’d previously purchased on Amazon under “Your Video Library”, and also access the free Prime videos, as well as buy new videos of course.

So that’s the story. I actually just made a great deal with Verizon FIOS and upped my Internet speed from 50/25 from 15/5, so Internet is blazingly fast on my PS3 now. When I had cable and DSL, I was used to video pausing in the middle at random times and being choppy, but right now I’m watching a video that’s running as smooth and clear as a Blu-Ray. The nice thing about FIOS is that you get your own dedicated line, meaning if the teenager in the apartment upstairs has WoW playing 24×7, you won’t see your bandwidth affected and your video streaming will still be lightning fast (self-serving note…if you’re interested in FIOS go through this link to sign up for FIOS, and both you and I will get a shiny new $50 American Express gift card :)).

So that’s it. Enjoy instant video on your PS3…and start working out those abs!