what's funny, oembed felt weird to me at first; but as many people pointed out, it's that "aside" kind of conversion i miss the most. also, embeds work as footnotes. why can't i embed local footnotes!
i've developed websites with Oembed and i don't understand why if you will not render media already on the server then use oembed to handle that but w/o copying again. or give the choice to embed/copy or render.
rendering is the most basic of web functions, why kill it?