Well, “always” seems like an exaggeration; consumer monitors were far beyond 480i before consumer TVs were.
> It looks like the situation is still that in the 4k OLED space there are a few ~$4000+ monitors and dozens of ~$1000 TVs.
That’s not monitors being behind in tech, that’s TVs being cheaper because of economies of scale and opportunity for ad serving and data harvesting.
> Is it an industry structure thing, where panel manufacturers integrate and co-develop with TV manufacturers but monitor manufacturers are separate
AFAIK, LG, Sharp, Samung, and Sony are all four panel/TV/monitor manufacturers; I dont think that’s an issue.