Google’s upcoming set-top box effort, Google TV, which has already been announced will be built into some upcoming displays from multiple different manufacturers, has been detailed in a video by the search giant in an effort to explain just what to expect from the device.

The biggest issue with Google TV is that we know an awful lot about the device without knowing, in any explicit sense, just what it is it’s supposed to do. We’ve known for a while that it runs a custom build of Google’s mobile operating system, Android, and that Intel seems to have had a hand in the hardware side of things, but other than that word has been relatively thin on just what we can actually expect the thing to do if we shell out for it. Now though, Google had released a video to detail just what the whole affair does, and while none of it is too surprising, it does shed some light on the device.

Google TV will specifically allow users to search for video content through their TV, as well you might expect. It will also act as a DVR, allowing users to record shows; the combination of a search engine and DVR alone is interesting enough, but Google is also touting the fact that the Google TV also comes with a web browser.

Of course, the big issue is that for much of this functionality it seems as though users would be very well placed to have a keyboard at their disposal (though the interface does seem thankfully to be largely mouse-free). For the moment, we’ll just be curious to see how well it does, but with Apple’s new version of the Mac Mini focussing more closely on the media side of things, it seems as though the set-top box business could well start heating up in the near future…

Now we just have to wait and see if the Google TV will see a release in Ireland…