Are sound bars worth it?

It’s quite tricky getting high quality sound from a Sony TV to an amp. I’ve done it via RCA jacks from the back of my Sony KDL 43 W755C to a spare input on the back of my Creek amp. As a bonus everything I play back through  my Sony bdp S6500 DVD player also gets fed to the amp via the TV. 

The tricky part was finding the necessary setting you have to change on the TV menu to enable audio out. I can try to look it up for you if you want.

In the meantime a soundbar can be a considerable improvement upon the TVs inbuilt sound if it’s wallmounted, and a soundbase even moreso if it sits upon a stand.

Funnily enough my non-audiophile family prefer the sound from the TV to that from my speakers claiming the extra bandwidth and bass gives them headaches.

I don’t know how I put up with them.
They probably feel the same.

@zimmerma 
I live near Montreal and I am a client of Videotron.
I have an old Illico module , with audio RCA outputs   , in the rear pannel.
I saw the same with newer Illico modules.
I do not know about the new Hellix modules.

so I am a bit supprised about the lack of these RCA outputs  on your Illico unit.

Your television may have a digital output that you may connect to you preamplifier for a less ´´ boomy ´´ sound than analog.
I just speculate about boomy and analog interconnect.

What outputs does it have?  Have you asked the cable company if they have other boxes available?  

I bought my girlfriend a ZVOX 2.1 "soundbar" (it has a subwoofer in it in addition to the two speakers) a few years ago and it sounds a lot better than the speakers in a TV.  She likes it, and I think it's OK when I visit, but I probably wouldn't have been satisfied with it for long if it was my system.  But most people would think my system is over the top.

Some of the higher end ZVOX speaker systems are pretty nice. They will accept a digital input from your cable box.

You could also likely output digital from your cable box into a simple, inexpensive DAC and out of the DAC via analog RCAs, into your pre-amp.