The green phosphor was originally "greener", but not as bright as the newer phosphors (these being more yellowish). Which makes for a smaller range of displayable colors.
One thing some more modern sets had was better chroma-luma separation, using a comb filter. This reduced the high frequency luma from contaminating the chroma (crawling rainbows on referee's shirts). A roundie with the old phosphor fed by an S-video source (and modified to accept the S-video) should look very good.
__________________
|