A long, long time ago, there were about 3 people in the public domain who you could rely on to give you a decent analysis of a player. There was no footage of players, no TV coverage of the champs and very little publicly available information about the draftees. Basically, you were relying on the likes of a poster like Weaver to give you the run down. The problem is that you had very few sources of information - which meant you had a limited number of opinions to consider and there was an increased likelihood of an error as you couldn't verify one person's thoughts against others.
These days, I think it is fantastic that we have the likes of Quigley and several others on forums, plus someone like Emma Quayle in the media, as well as video footage and draft combine reports. You can balance these different sources and reach a view of your own based on these various opinions. It is like being able to read 12 different accounts of an historical moment and then having your own opinion on what happened, as opposed to relying on a single source.
Video highlights are pretty limited on their own and don't tell anywhere near the full picture. Where I find them useful is to put a picture to the descriptions of players providing on BigFooty and elsewhere. If someone is described as an inside mid, and you see some highlights of them burrowing into packs to win the footy, it provides a bit of a corroboration.