Does your transport have a standby button either on the remote or the unit itself? If so, this will usually turn the display off. As far as damage to the lights, all I can tell you is the Classe felt it was important to shut the display off because my CP-50 turns its display off automatically if left idle for an hour.
Digital Display Worry?
Sometimes after the last CD ends, my transport sits idle for hours displaying the track count and total time of the CD sitting inside. When I finally get around to tending to it, I have this guilty feeling. Will the display characters burn into the display or worse, burn out prematurely, because they remain unchanged? Or is this a needless worry?