2. The local device of claim 1 , further comprising a manual input component configured to allow manual initiation of the communications.
1. A local device comprising: a primary functionality component; an input component configured to receive speech input; a processing component coupled to the input component, the processing component configured to: identify keywords in the speech input, determine whether the local device is capable of processing the speech input based on whether one or more keywords are identified in the speech input, if the local device is capable of processing the speech input, process the speech input, generate corresponding local control signals, and transmit the local control signals to the primary functionality component to direct an action in the primary functionality component, and if the local device is not capable of processing the speech input, extract feature parameters from the speech input for processing at a remote system, receive remote control signals from the remote system responsive to the remote system performing speech recognition on the feature parameters by storing an acoustic model of the feature parameters and recognizing a command based on a previously stored acoustic model associated with the local device to address specific characteristics of the feature parameters, and send the remote control signals to the primary functionality component; and a transceiver coupled to the processing component and configured to establish communications between the local device and the remote system, wherein the communications comprise: high bandwidth communications configured to return data supporting audio or video output at the local device, and low bandwidth communications configured to return data supporting the remote control signals.