Computer generated holography (CGH) is technology for generating holograms of synthetic, three dimensional (3D) objects which may not exist in the physical world. The process, however, requires heavy amount of computation as the resolution of a hologram is significantly higher than that of a typical optical image. This paper reviews four modern techniques for fast generation of digital Fresnel holograms which are important in the development of holographic video systems. The methods that will be described include the virtual window, sub-line, wavefront recording plane (WRP), and the interpolative WRP schemes. These works share the common objective to generate digital Fresnel hologram at a speed that is close to the video frame rate, and with complexity which is realizable with affordable computing and reconfigurable hardware devices. The author will present the principles and realization of these works, as well as some potential area of research in digital holography.