(Update July 2, 2012: The Display Recorder app has now been removed from the Itunes App store. At this stage it is unclear whether the app will reappear or has been permanently removed.)

There was some surprising news this morning with the announcement that Apple had approved a screencasting app for the iPad and iPhone called Display Recorder. As far as we know this is the first app that allows for full screencasting of other apps on your Apple device. Previously if you wanted to record a screencast you would need to link wirelessly to your computer using the Reflection app, which we looked at recently.

Display Recorder costs $1.99.  The app seems to work reasonably well though at this stage there is a bug that means you have to change your region settings on your device to United States. You can do this in Settings>General>International>Regional Format.

Recording of the screencast was simple. Just open the app, hit record and then you can skip between apps by clicking your home button and selecting the app you want to use (you can also double press your home button to quickly access open apps, or use the four fingered swipe to switch quickly between apps). Once you’ve recorded, head back to Display Recorder and click stop.

We did run into some problems uploading to Youtube as the upload froze on each attempt. Instead we saved the video into the iPad’s Camera Roll and then uploaded from there. You might use an app like iMovie to trim the video and clean up any errors (particularly the first and last few seconds when you need to start recording within Display Recorder).

Display Recorder looks like a promising screencasting solution. We had a very quick play with the app and recorded our first impressions which you can watch below. (1.17)