This paper proposes a hand gesture recognition technique that allows users to enjoy uninterrupted interaction with a variety of multimedia applications. Hand gestures are recognized using joint information acquired from a Kinect sensor, and the recognized gestures are applied to multimedia content. To this end, hand gestures are quantized in the grid space, expressed using an 8-directional vector chain, and finally recognized on the basis of a hidden Markov model. To assess the proposed approach, we define the hand gestures used in the “Smart Interior” multimedia application, and collect a dataset of gestures using the Kinect. Our experiments demonstrate a high recognition ratio of between 90% and 100%. Furthermore, the experiments identify the possibility of applying this approach to a variety of multimedia content by verifying its superior operation in actual applications.