It’s all about the screens, baby. With PC desktop and mobile screens locked down already by major OS developers, we’ve still got one huge screen looming on the horizon: TV screens. And, in light of today’s big announcement by Apple—which might include information about Apple TV—the various OS giants appear to be circling, girding for a battle.

The current contenders for this title would probably come from the three heavyweights of the industry already: Apple, Microsoft, and Google.

According to Andrew Eisner at Retrevo, TV manufacturers really need to standardize on the OS, for the sake of the customer—and this will probably lead to the ultimate showdown. He writes,

A TV OS vacuum exists at the moment and unfortunately for consumers, TV manufacturers appear to be filling it with their own proprietary offerings. At this year’s CES, we saw all the big players showing off “connected” TVs with proprietary environments offering apps and services from providers like Netflix, Blockbuster, Pandora, and Skype. LG calls their platform “NetCast,” Samsung calls theirs “Samsung Apps” and Vizio has a platform called “Vizio Internet Apps” or VIA.

It’s unclear how all these proprietary platforms will work with different apps and services but we feel a better solution is one standard TV OS that would run a whole range of apps including smartphone and tablet apps. Apps would be able to run on a TV, receiver, Blu-ray player, game console or any other device that has a screen or connects to a device with a screen.

While apps are all the rage right now for mobile devices, people still do spend a particular amount of time in front of the ole’ boob tube. Mobile devices are nice when on-the-go or when tripping the light fantastic, but very little beats sitting down in the dark of the living room, soaking up passive entertainment rays from the couch. Lounging around is a time honored consumer tradition and we don’t want to have to tote around a laptop or watch a movie on a tiny screen.

That’s why we have the huge plasma TV, after all.

So, we can probably expect to find apps coming soon to a television near you. Gone will be the days of surfing idly through channels, trying to recall the code for the weather channel, or what section of the wildly scrolling colored list of streams might happen to house today’s news. Instead, remote in hand, we’ll pop on the television and select from a bubbly panel of apps that will the deliver the content we want. Netflix or Blockbuster for movies, The Weather Channel app showing weekly forecasts, local and syndicated television promoting blocks for popular TV shows.

Someone will have to write the native environment for all these apps to run in.

Plus, it’s a big chance for all the different mobile developers to stretch their legs and port popular apps from mobiles to television sets. Certainly apps developed for on-the-go and dense interaction (like keyboard use) will not play well with the television crowd, but many entertainment offerings certainly will, and there’s plenty of movies-to-phone apps out there already.

Microsoft already has a solid OS from the PC market, but has been having some trouble going up against Google and Apple in the mobile app and OS venue. To this end, the article from Retrevo doesn’t give them a good score, but that still leaves two other solid contenders.

Google hasn’t yet made an OS for PCs, but they’ve got Google Andorid, which is one of the most popular mobile OS platforms ever. They play nicely with app developers and have carved themselves a giant entertainment niche. As well as coming up with Google TV, which positions them directly in line to be interested in the TV OS market.

Apple has been an entertainment giant from the start and already knows the ins and outs of writing OSes—having written their own for many years—so they’re nicely poised to take the market.

With so many already powerful development schemes out there, it’s only a matter of time that TV OSes start making their debut.