The fact whether we're in the OS or not, whether it's a bootloader or a pre-init
script or whatever is irrelevant from the end-user perspective. The end-user sees that the
system will wait the password endlessly and I agree with Joseph that it's not good
behaviour.
Do you have OLED monitor? Generic LCD/LED monitors does not suffer
from this issue. I never shut down my monitor for years and it works fine.
The
monitor damage is not the issue here; it's just a possible side effect of the issue.
As Chris mentioned earlier - consider a battery-powered system, which will just wait for
the password until the battery discharges completely. This behaviour simply isn't
sensible, in my opinion, and - forgive the phrase - smells of "works for us, so why
bother?" thinking.