A digital versatile disc (DVD) playback apparatus is disclosed for searching program chain (PGC) objects within a DVD content source. The DVD playback apparatus includes a DVD reader for reading a DVD content source and a user input device for receiving user commands. The DVD content source comprises a plurality of PGC objects and the DVD playback apparatus is able to search among the PGC objects using the following mechanisms. A PGC object pointer allocating mechanism is provided that is configured to allocate a unique pointer to each PGC object on the DVD content source. Once the PGC object pointers are allocated, a PGC search mechanism, which is coupled to the PGC pointer allocating mechanism, performs searches for a requested PGC object using a pointer assigned to the desired PGC object. Selected of the PGC objects are allocated to at least one data block while the remaining are considered to be non-block objects. The PGC pointers are place within a linear array for searching.