My fat ps3 is on 3.41 firmware and i use a dongle to jailbreak.
I mainly use my ps3 for blu rays, streaming from pc and emulators. I dont use it for games as i have a 360 for that and i dont go on psn.

So im wondering, is it worth upgrading to custom 3.55 firmware (like geohots) which I know will disable playing backups but im not bothered about that as i dont play backups.
I will then install the properly signed emulators that i use.
Would i then be able to play the new gran turismo if i bought it as i cant at the mo on 3.41?
Will i also be able to play blu rays as ive heard some firmware disables blu ray playback?
Once i install the custom 3.55 firmware, can i then boot emulators etc without needing my dongle?

If this is all possible does anyone have a link of installing the custom firmware?

Thanks

Mark

the answers to all of your questions are yes. if you do not care about backups, the current cfw's will be ok for you, but i personally suggest waiting a bit longer until you have verified that the emu's you want to play are all working correctly on the new cfw's. finding a website that has up to date information posted by the website staff will help you know when to do this. unfortunately, all of the websites i have found for info have forced popup ads or worse so i cannot suggest any of them to you. just do a search for "ps3 cfw hacks" or similar terms and you will see what i mean.

I have a similar question too. is it safe to install this cfw and not get banned from psn? I dont care about playing backups and have legit games but I am curious about homebrew stuff.

They are not banning yet. But they will know if you load homebrew. The PS3 phones home all the time to send reports of what apps are being loaded and other data that tells them that your console is able to load homebrew.

As of now they are not banning consoles even though they know what ones are using homebrew. but I am sure at some point this will change since now they pretty much have no other choice for trying to block homebrew and backups on even retail firmware.