A uniform resource indicator (URI) pointer system and method are provided for retrieving MPEG-4 data pointers in an MPEG-2 TS. The method comprises: receiving an MPEG-2 TS; locating a URI in the TS; in response to the URI, accessing an address; in response to accessing the address, retrieving MPEG-4 resources; and, decoding the MPEG-4 resources. The URI pointer can be a local cache address, a Web protocol identifier (such as http), and/or a local identifier (lid). In some aspects, the MPEG-2 TS may include MPEG-4 resources organized in an Object Carousal (OC) transport protocol. Then, lid URIs provide a binding name and access scheme to the objects in the OC. For example, a lid URI may be embedded in an Initial Object Descriptor (IOD) to locate resources in the OC such as a binary format for scenes (BIFS) scene description stream and/or an object descriptor stream.