They won't be legal but f*** the law. If those a-holes with HIDs can put out way more light legally, why can't I put out slightly slightly more?
The legal problems with tinted bulbs come from the color, not the light output (which is usually less than good bulbs without tinting). The PIAA bulbs I'm talking about are still 55-watt bulbs no matter what the marketing department says, and there's a reason that they're trying to rate brightness with watts (which simply isn't a thing) instead of lumens (which is how brightness is actually measured).
There are also issues of how the beam pattern is designed. DOT-legal HID setups distribute that extra light in many different areas so that the "hot spot" does not exceed legal values. Most of the "extra" lumens from HID setups are thrown away from the hot spot; the optics are designed to throw a different beam pattern so that the "hot spot" isn't overpowered. If you drop a significantly brighter bulb into a housing designed for a dimmer bulb, you're liable to end up throwing too much light into the hot spot to stay within legal limits.
Think of it this way:
Let's say, for purely example purposes to keep the math easy, that the legal limit for light in the "hot spot" of a headlight beam is 1,000 lumens, the limit for light to each side is 500 lumens, and the limit for light close to the car is 750 lumens.
You have two headlight optical units, one designed for a 1,500 lumen halogen bulb and one designed for a 2,500 lumen HID.
The first optic will send 66% of the light into the "hot spot" because that's where light is most critical. It will probably then spread the remaining light equally between the left and right leaving a "black hole" in front of the car (this is actually how most older US headlights worked generally as foreground light was very low).
The second optic will only send 40% of the light to the "hot spot", at which point the "hot spot" is maxed out. It will then disperse 20% of the light left, and 20% right, maxing out both left and right fields as well. The remaining light will be dumped into the foreground.
In both of the above cases, the "hot spot" never exceeds 1,000 lumens.
Now, let's put a 2,000 lumen over-wattage bulb in the first optical housing. It's still sending 66% of the light to the "hot spot." That means you now have a bit over 1,300 lumens in the hot spot, 30% more than the legal limit. Even though the total light output is lower than the HID system, you're over legal limits in a specific portion of the beam pattern and causing potential problems for others on the road. You're also not getting the full benefit because you're not maxing out the left/right areas of the beam and you're sacrificing visibility off to the sides of the car.
Hope that helps illustrate why the combination of the bulb and the housing are important.
ZV