I have never noticed this phenomenon before, are you sure it is not related to the production date of the lamps? Traditionally they used either calcium pyrophosphate or alumina powders for the coating, which has excellent light diffusion characteristics. However it also absorbs nearly 10% of the light output. More recently manufacturers have shifted to fumed silica coatings with much smaller particles and a very tight particle size distribution. Such coatings have much better light transmission but less diffusion, and the filament or discharge tube can be seen more easily.
I
this video , there is an embedded picture of a chinese Osram NAV(SON)-E 250W, showing how the arctube image looks through the coating at EOL, when they are operaing. These lamps aren't really frosted, but have a coating that causes them to look like that.