Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is a field of research with growing applications. Control of devices is one of the major areas of interest in this field. In this paper, we introduce a prototype which controls the basic operations of a television set using a set of predefined hand gestures. The device functions by processing a live feed from a specific direction captured using a webcam. The hand gesture recognised from the live feed is translated and used to control the television. For simplicity, the prototype was designed for a gesture set of four basic hand movements. The various algorithms discussed here for achieving this were implemented using MATLAB. © Research India Publications.