I've spent the better part of a month trying to resolve this issue. I have spent over 20hours on the phone to Apple Support and also driven 100km each way to the nearest Apple store where they insisted on testing the AirPods. Of course they found no problem. Apple's opinion is that because my AirPods work fine with my iPhone, then there cannot be anything wrong with them. Apple have stated that they do not warrant their audio devices to work with anything other than Apple products. This is completely flawed and unacceptable logic. Imagine if Beats, Sennheiser, Jabra etc didn't warrant their headphones on anything other than their brand of device. They don't even make TV's or stereos!!
Apple are insisting that this is not an Apple problem and despite me elevating the case, there is no solution from them at all other than to deal with Samsung and make it a Samsung issue. Apple have told me to insist that Samsung engineering needs to release a firmware update to make it work.
The problem with this logic is that:
1. The AirPods worked fine out of the box, until the firmware 5A377 update which then rendered them to not work.
2. The issue is also with Sony and LG tv's... so it cannot be a Samsung issue!
I have just downloaded the latest Samsung TV firmware/software update (ver. 1401) which was released on the weekend. It did NOT fix the issue.
I have now raised a case with Samsung who say they will take 1-2 business days to investigate.
However I am not encouraged very much as the assistant had no knowledge of the problem and there were no notes on his system of this issue.
Everyone I speak to acts like they are completely unaware of this issue. They won't even agree to read these forums when I point it out to them. All I can say is for all of you to try raising the issue with BOTH Apple and your TV manufacturer and hopefully eventually there will be critical mass and it will get resolved. Feel free to quote my case ID to your local Apple rep: 101823830119 and they can reference that if it helps you/us.
I'm going to try to install the next Beta firmware tonight and will update how I go....