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I’d just like to preemptively thank you all for any help you may offer!

So I recently bought a new 4k TV (Sony AF9) 2nd hand and now have to address my old AV equipment which is ridiculously now not entirely compatible if I want to use 4k sources. Ideally I’d like to come to a solution without buying a UHD bluray player, I opted for an Xbox one as I purchased one for £80 (2nd hand) which seems like a no brainer when a UHD bluray player costs about the same and has no where close to the same functionality. However one functionality the Xbox one obviously doesnt have is dual HDMI output hence my issue.

I have two receivers available to me, a Denon AVR-2310 and a Harman Kardon AVR-7300 (apologies if names in the US are different to here in the UK) which someone chucked in with some speakers. Ideally I’d like to try make use of the Harman Kardon as it is practically worthless with its old tech yet is obviously a very impressive amplifier being an old flagship model so seems a waste to leave unused. The Denon is also a good amp obviously but has HDMI inputs making it the likely option.

A few options I’m trying to consider:

eARC – My TV has eARC but this is annoyingly again not backwards compatible which doesn’t quite make sense to me, why can’t you just use it as a pure audio output or why dont TV’s just have an Audio output which is what this was developed to achieve with new tech when the tech of an audio output has seemingly been around since the invention of hdmi audio? But anyway, is there a device which can extract eARC audio to be input into my amp?
I know you can buy HDCP compliant audio extractors with EDID control which to my knowledge last time I looked are very expensive but if anyone is aware of any cheap alternatives which would work for me that would be great!
An HDCP compliant pre-amp to be used with the direct inputs of the Harman Kardon – I have trawled through the manual of the AVR 7300 and it does only seem to have a direct option in stereo but then it also says there’s no signal processing on the direct inputs. If this is the case can these be used as a direct power amp input? I understand this will go through the pre-amp but is there a REAL issue with that? Given that I’m trying to avoid buying a cheap AVR receiver which is HDCP compliant I can’t imagine the audio hit of going through two pre-amps as dramatic? (before someone points out buying a pre-amp is more expensive than me just buying a UHD bluray player the idea here was to make use of the higher quality AVR 7300)
Any other options?

Thanks for any help guys!