With the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) getting underway this week, anticipation mounts for what is expected to be the start of the Year of the Tablet PC.

Manufacturers and operating systems from all over are getting in the tablet game, which finally had the door kicked in last year with the release of Apple’s iPad.  This year’s CES is projected to be the big unveiling of numerous attempts to rival the iPad, with Google’s Android versions the most highly anticipated after the success of its numerous smartphone launches in 2010.

Already this morning there have been announcements of tablets from Toshiba, Vizio, Asustek, and Motion Computing among others before the show officially gets underway Thursday.

This isn’t the only tablet-based news to spread today. Comcast announced it will allow for in-home streaming of its live and On Demand content to the iPad and Android tablets later this year.

This is part of the cable company’s expansion of its Xfinity TV iPad app, launched in November. As of now, subscribers can use the app as a remote and channel guide. But app users will now have access to about 3,000 hours of On Demand programming, with the live content streaming specifics not yet known.

This type of content availability for the tablet PC is something Verizon Fios and Dish Network have both dipped into, so how this competition develops will be something to keep an eye on.

Also today, the first ever global tablet forecast was issued today by the Yankee Group and projections say the tablet PC market will bring in $46 billion in 2014, up from $16 billion in 2010. Forrester, meanwhile, has predicted that tablet use will double in 2011, and will reach one-third of U.S. consumers by 2015.

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