1. A gesture recognition system for remote control of a device, comprising: (a) a sensor for capturing video data of a user's hand at a location near said device; (b) a processor for processing the captured video data of said hand; and (c) programming executable on said processor for performing steps comprising: segmenting each hand image in the captured video based on skin color; extracting a parameter of the segmented hand image; said parameter relating to one of a plurality of fingers in the hand image; tracking the parameter in the hand image; quantizing the parameter for each of the plurality of fingers to a plurality of states by comparing the parameter against one or more thresholds; classifying a hand gesture based on the quantized states of the one or more fingers; and operating the device based on recognition of said hand gesture.